Personal Narrative: My Experience With Lyme Disease

Two men on different mountains, in different decades, sit atop snowy, windy mountains, reflecting on what got them on such a cold, towering mound of rock and snow. Jon Krakauer tells his story of climbing the Devil’s Thumb “a dozen or so years,” ago, whereas Erik Weihenmayer, a blind man, pulls you into the middle of his story of climbing Mt. Everest with a team of nineteen. Krakauer, in an attempt to escape his boring, dead-end job, ventures to climb a mountain in Alaska by himself. Jon did not succeed on the route he had originally planned on taking, but did achieve his goal of reaching the summit of the Devil’s Thumb by going a different course. However; Jon found that climbing the mountain was unsatisfactory. Weihenmayer reached the summit of Everest with few problems. Erik states that some obstacles during climbing were made invalid because of his blindness. Although both men are in similar situations, they both have very differing experiences on these summits.

On June 15, 2013, six weeks prior to climbing Mount Rainier’s Inter Glacier and Emmons Glacier to Camp Schurman (9,450’) on the east side, Tim and I hiked from Paradise (5,400’) via the Muir snowfield to Camp Muir (10,188’) located on the south side. The idea was to replicate similar hiking conditions with a full weighted camp pack, ascend 4,800’ and camp overnight to acclimate to the high altitude. We bunkered down early inside our tent around 7:35 P.M. only to be awakened at midnight by the soft chatter of enthusiastic voices as several climbing parties prepared for their departure for Washington’s grandest summit. Approximately one hour later, the unmistaken crunching sound of crampons meeting the mountain’s cold icy surface would drown

Lyme disease is an illness that spread through spirochetes thereby affecting the patient’s nervous system, brain, joints, muscle and heart among other body parts if left untreated. According to AHN USA, Lyme is one of the most serious epidemics of this age. Since 1991, the number of people suffering from this serious multi-system inflammatory disease in the USA has doubled. This figure is backed by CDC statistics that show over 320,000 new cases of the disease are reported every year. In spite of the rising cases treating Lyme disease has proven difficult because to be difficult because of underreporting and inaccurate test.

A problem that I have been presented with in my life that nobody else could solve was my lymes disease. Lymes disease is a bacterial infection spread to the human body by ticks. As the days went on the need for sleep and the want to remember loomed greater.There are many symptoms of lymes disease such as over tiredness, memory loss, and rejection of certain foods.

We drive up Twin Peaks. There are a few bold stragglers running toward the top. We drive up Twin Peaks and it is beautiful, you can't see an inch of the city, it is floating in fog. You can see the fog. Dad says we have to come back on a clear day. They built a look-out point up there, but they also stuck a post in the ground on a mound that offered topographical information. I run up the mound, then down, then read.

My mom has been suffering the symptoms of Lyme disease for well over two years now, but was only recently diagnosed this month. Her symptoms began with a general sense of fatigue and an overall sense of pain and aches throughout her body. Over time, her health continued to deteriorate and her unknown illness developed into something significantly more debilitating. Some days, she endured such extreme fatigue and pain that she could not manage to get out of bed. I then noticed that her memory and cognitive abilities began to decline. She experienced trouble remembering simple phrases and conversations I had with her, to the point that she couldn't repeat a number I had just given to her seconds before. For over two years she attended countless

It started in the 1930’s, it was the time I (Jack) had just joined the Nova Core. A huge empire rose for gambling, alcohol, and distributing other hard core drugs. The one who set up the empire was the one and only Salvador himself. He was a big gun killing happy man who liked nothing other than to kill a man with nothing but his fist. It was a cold rainy night when we were doing our normal walk around the base when we heard of a break out in A6 area. So we ran over there and it was a sick man that bit a chunk of meat out a private’s neck and was eating him fast. We surrounded him and yelled at him to stop. The man turned around and ran after one of the generals so we had to put him down. We were all curious the next day on what happened and since the core wouldn’t tell us anything. So I did some research after we killed the body. It turns that the guy was infected with a virus related to the black plague. It formed when the Nova Core and the

In the beginning of Bryson and Katz’s journey up the Appalachian Trail, the two men quickly find out the physical toll that the hike would take on them. While Bryson was “bug-eyed, and breathing hard”

Imagine, as a 12 year old, not being able to move. Every part of your body feels like lead and you’re barely able to lift your head up. You have no energy, sleeping all day and hardly able to perform mundane, everyday activities. Headaches and stomach pains are a normal part of your life. You stop hanging out with your friends and become isolated in your room because you can barely function. This is what happened to my sister. Once a happy, playful child, she became almost lifeless laying on the couch all day. The pain she lived through every day showed in her eyes. All of the pain came from a single source: lyme disease. Lyme disease is a when borrelia burgdorferi infects the body’s immune system, via deer tick bites (Halperin, pg. 1). First discovered in 1977, lyme disease has become one of the most significant vector- borne diseases in America. (Fuller, pg. 132). By 2002, more than 23,000 cases have been reported (Fuller, pg. 132). Even though the number of cases for lyme disease has increased dramatically, many people have still never heard of lyme disease. Many doctors in the past have misdiagnosed patients because they believed there was no such thing as lyme disease. Each case affects the body differently, making it more difficult to figure out the symptoms for the disease.

We arrived at Whitman Mission. We walked for 16 days and 255 miles. We will cross the Blue Mountains. A few days ago someone was talking about the mountains. They said when they went over them, it was steep, lots of timber was falling down the hills and hitting their wagons. While we were in the mountains, they were right. While we were there, hundred of branches fell on us and were tumbling down the hills. Our wagon almost fell over multiple times. Tree branches blocked our wheels and wouldn't let us move. It was a nightmare. The hills took us forever to get over because we had to push the wagon up the hill and we had to pull the wagon up to push it down. The oxen were tripping over rocks and branches, the wheels were moving too fast. When

Thus, this study was ineffective in estimating the size of the treatment effect. In addition, the authors indicate that previous trials did not account for baseline difference in the quality of life for Lyme disease patients. The authors accounted for this by including the baseline quality of life as a covariate in the current study. This background information regarding previous studies would have been useful in the introduction in order to understand the context in which the study was performed and the reasoning behind the methods.

When you have Lyme, your immune system has to work really hard. If you’re battling your nourishments, you develop inflammation in your body. You become quite exhausted, and you can't ward it off effectively.

Lyme disease can manifest itself in many different ways. Infected patients may experience a range of symptoms affecting their psychological and physical well being. This makes it challenging for healthcare professionals to diagnose the disease immediately and apply proper treatment

As I near a year of antibiotic treatment in a few days, I’d like to take the time to let everyone know my current health status and what I’ve been doing the past months. At the beginning of January, I had to take a break from antibiotics due to a case of gastroenteritis. Within a week of being off of the antibiotics, I began to feel my Lyme symptoms returning. Migraines, body aches, nausea, fatigue, brainfog, anxiety, extreme anger, and insomnia were just the major symtoms. The symtoms became unbearable, so I began antibiotic treatment once again on February 5th. Since restarting the antibiotics, I have noticed a huge difference in my health. I also began a medical cocktail IV treatment once a week to boost my immune system, along with many

My legs sore from hiking for several hours straight, my back aching from the 30 pound backpack I was carrying, I trudged up the hill towards our next rest stop, kicking up dust the whole way. I was on a 4-day 50 mile backpacking trip in the sequoias. I was backpacking with 14 other boyscouts and several leaders. “Only 2 more miles everybody!” one of the leaders called out. At that moment everybody let out a sigh of relief, however, we failed to recognize the little amount of sunlight we had left.