I Feel Normal

I feel normal today. This is simply amazing. Not sure why. Was it the gluten-free bread or a week of rest? Was it crying enough, forgiving enough, asserting enough, killing enough bacteria and spirochetes? What is it that makes us better one day only to drop away from the grace of normalcy tomorrow? Is getting better slowly more functioning days, coming on the heels of feeling as if I am relapsing into Babesial migraines. Is it the homeopathy, yoga, or doing nothing but watching Oprah discuss infidelity and working girls? Some days I am quite certain that I know how to treat chronic Lyme. I feel smarter than my doctors, sharper than my therapist. I am certain that it is the current antibiotic or supplement that I discovered in the vitamin shoppe next to immune boosters.

My mother-in-law warns me that I am becoming obsessed with my illness- though she readily admits that she could possibly do the same. We do. We obsess. It is hard to stay away from forums and chat rooms, the articles from 1994 that discuss Cerebral malaria,"a little like Neuro-Babesiosis." I believe the tick that bit us made us need to seek out other infected people, share symptoms and remedies, critique our doctors and politicians, and read about anything to do with tick-bite illness.

I feel normal but I still can't eat food that is not warm, use my right shoulder fully or book a client. My normal is not reliable. I have no way of knowing how long it will last or how good it will stay. I can not plan to go to Greece or volunteer regularly at my daughter's school. My normal is so unreliably changing, it is a secret. I whisper it to myself. "I feel okay today." Yes I sweated and ached in the night but today I feel happy, good, strong. I only tell the people that I can trust as I am afraid to lose the little bit of sympathy, help, understanding that I do get. I look so good, after all.