I Can’t Remember the Last Time I Brushed My Hair

29 Aug 2018 Leave a comment

by Shannon McDonough in Lyme Disease

I’m sitting here at the end of my workday. I don’t have the mental energy to start a new task, but it’s still early-ish in the evening here in the Pacific Northwest, USA. I started to scroll through Facebook because that’s my go-to “social” activity. Having Lyme disease means my social life is extremely limited since I often don’t have the energy to socialize, even with people I like (and I’m certainly not going to use that precious energy on people I don’t like).

So, I’m sitting here at my computer and I reached back to pull my ponytail away from my neck — I almost always wear a ponytail because doing my hair is exhausting and pointless really, since I rarely leave my house — and I realized it’s full of knots and snarls and I couldn’t run my fingers through it even if I wanted to. How long has it been this way? It’s really anyone’s guess.

And then I remembered I went out of the house like this. Only to the mailbox and I don’t think any of my neighbors saw me, but still. Who leaves the house without brushing their hair (or at the very least taking a quick look in the mirror)? Uh, that would be me.

There was a time in my life I wouldn’t have gone to the mailbox without full hair and makeup, but that was many years ago. The weirdest part is I’m not even that bothered by it. These days the bare minimum for going outside appears to be, “Am I wearing a bra? Yep. Good to go.” Boy, how times have changed.

I think the bottom line here is if you can’t remember the last time you brushed your hair, you should probably brush your hair, right? But the truth is I probably won’t. I’ll go downstairs, make myself some dinner, watch TV, and go to bed where my hair will get even more tangled than it is right now. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day … maybe not a hair-brushing day, but a new day just the same.

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I’d love to hear your comments below. If you liked this post, then please ‘Like’ it and share with your friends. And don’t forget to click ‘Follow’ to get email notifications whenever I post something new. But most of all…thank you for reading and being a part of my journey.

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Why I Stopped Writing

18 May 2018 2 Comments

by Shannon McDonough in Lyme Disease Tags: , , ,

Forbidding_Stop_Sign

Photo credit thecrazyfilmgirl on Flickr.

I have simultaneously looked forward to and dreaded this moment for quite some time, having been seriously thinking about it for more than a year. What would I say about a four and a half year unplanned and totally unintentional hiatus from this blog? How could I explain all that went into that happening and everything that’s happened since? The answer to both is I can’t. At least not in one post.

So I’m just going to tell you why I stopped posting here (hence the title of this piece) and share additional details in due time. Full disclosure: I’m almost as afraid of publishing this post as I was when I published my first post more than seven years ago. There’s something sort of terrifying about putting myself out there to be judged.

Oh, well. Here we go.

I don’t actually remember making a conscious decision to stop writing. After I wrote my last post, Here’s to the Dark Bits I just remember not knowing where to go or what to do next. And being tired. So damn tired.

I had been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue in May 2012 after suffering from severe fatigue, pain, and some other random symptoms for more than a year. My friend Donna recalls that I told her (although I don’t remember this) I wasn’t going to write anymore because with my adrenal fatigue I was just too worn out to write.

I went to several doctors over the years to try to get help; sometimes having to borrow money from my parents to pay for it because I didn’t always have health insurance (support single-payer, yo!). But it wasn’t until February 2017 that I was finally correctly diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease (along with Lyme’s friends Mycoplasma, Babesia, and Bartonella, and Epstein-Barr virus just for kicks).

It took a while to get my immune system to a point where I could even attempt Lyme treatment since the treatment itself can be hard on your body. In September 2017 I started treatment and recently added a new protocol to what I was already taking (my entire day focuses around taking pills and drops and sprays at specific times of the day, with and without food — it’s a job in itself).

For years, I’ve told myself I’ll write again when I feel better. I try to remain hopeful, but so far, not much has improved and I’ve finally come to the realization that this may be my life now. That as much as I want to be healthy again, it could be a long haul if it happens at all. So I decided there was no good time to start writing again and as hard as it is to add something extra to my life right now, I have to do it.

There are so many things I want to talk about — and by ‘talk’ I mean write because I am far better at expressing myself in writing than speaking — so it’s hard to predict what direction this blog will take going forward. I keep an ongoing list of topics in a Note on my iPhone and they run the gamut from what it’s like to live with Lyme disease to how I fell in love with David Duchovny. I just know I want to focus on something more than my job and my treatment and just getting through each day.

My posts may be shorter than they used to be and there may be typos and incorrect grammar since one of Lyme’s many fun symptoms is cognitive difficulties, also known as brain fog, (thank god for the Grammarly app) but I’m going to write anyway. I’d love it if you’d cut me some slack for now.

Here’s what I can say: I will write what I can when I can and hopefully it won’t be four years in between posts. Seems like a reasonable goal, right?

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I’d love to hear your comments below. If you liked this post, then please ‘Like’ it and share with your friends. And don’t forget to click ‘Follow’ to get email notifications whenever I post something new. But most of all…thank you for reading and being a part of my journey.