Anxiety

Freak Out Fridays

            Pavlov would have had a field day with me and, more specifically, my Lyme-induced anxiety. My anxiety is like the hungry dogs’ salivation response in the famous stimulus-response experiment. It has been deeply conditioned over time as the result of the overwhelming nature of Lyme disease.

            There is never a “good” time to contract a mind numbing case of neurological Lyme disease, but if there is a really “bad” time, I think it has to be in your 30s and 40s. These are the absolute busiest years of life. The balance of work, marriage, family, socialization and caretaking responsibilities can be challenging to even the healthiest people during those years. It is a time that we anticipate that our health will be adequate to support all the responsibility that we take on. If we are lucky, it is, but if not….all hell breaks loose.  Because most of our peers fall into the “lucky” category, they have no basis to understand or empathize with an illness that slows the forward progress of life.

            When you have neurological Lyme disease it is hard enough to keep the internal chaos at bay, forget about having to handle the outside world too. If these difficulties were on a list of symptoms, they would be called “processing” and “executive functioning” deficits. In real life these symptoms translate to being extremely confused by information coming in from the outside, and not being able to organize squat. (And there is a whole lot of “squat” to organize just to get through a day for most people). An ordinary busy productive life becomes entirely too overwhelming. Keeping up with the expected pace while dealing with Lyme and Lyme treatment is an exercise in absolute futility. To those who do not suffer from chronic illness, it may seem unreasonable to believe that anyone could possibly struggle so greatly with the small tasks we all take for granted. After all, Lyme is completely invisible and difficult to “prove”….. even to those with a medical degree. The world does not slow down to allow you to catch your breath. It just keeps rolling and if you can’t keep up with the pace, it flattens you in its' wake.

       I have three children who, at the height of my struggle, were young enough to still need a lot of care but old enough to be super busy with extra-curricular activities. When I first saw my LLMD and explained this, she called it not an “ideal” situation for healing because there is no time to rest. It’s not only the lack of time to rest, but the sheer amount of extra energy their activities required of me that made it tough to heal. It’s not as though I had to run around on the soccer field with them, but it sure felt like I had. I had absolutely no energy, first because of the Lyme itself and then because of the treatment. Effective Lyme treatment kills the bacteria but it also overloads the body with the Lyme waste, so the medicines actually exacerbate the symptoms until the body can clear all the bugs. This is called a “herxheimer” reaction, or “herx” and it is a major hurdle to healing.

      No energy, constant “herxing”, difficulty processing and the complete inability to organize leads to a very inefficient stressed out mother. Weekend planning required the strategy and reasoning skills that I did not possess. It’s pretty simple math, 3 kids clearly outnumber 2 parents. Add in multiple sports, play dates, sleep overs, religious education classes, and birthday parties for each and life spirals out of control. With each activity there were start times, end times, field directions, snacks to bring, drop off locations and pick up locations to remember. Just trying to figure out the weekly puzzle rattled my brain: forget about finding the energy to carry out the plan. Maybe you can imagine that by Monday I was capable ONLY of quietly drawing breath.

            Some consider anxiety to be a direct symptom caused by Lyme bacteria. In my case, I know it was conditioned by the other Lyme symptoms.  Every weekend was a battlefield of stress that I had no ammunition to handle. I was living in a world that I could not tolerate, yet had no option to escape. That is exactly how my anxiety was conditioned, just as in the case Pavlov's famous experiment. It got to the point where my anxiety rose a bit with each passing weekday, culminating in sheer panic by Friday. My body knew that it did not have the energy reserve to survive the weekend without sacrificing a little more of my health. My mind understood the ramifications of needing to do it anyway. In Pavlov’s case: the bell triggered saliva but in my case the upcoming weekend triggered panic. An endless string of questions and self-doubt invaded my brain: “Where do I have to be?, What do I have to do? HOW am I ever going to survive this? I CANNOT DO THIS.”

            It may seem irrational to have such severe anxiety about the impending weekend, but in my case and in the case of most who suffer from Lyme disease, it’s really not. It’s like sending a naked unarmed soldier into active combat. My hope is that sharing my story will help others understand the difference between “irrational” (aka “crazy”) behavior and completely understandable behavior. The difference lies in the absolutely rational reason underlying that behavior. In the case of Lyme disease: ILLNESS makes the world an overwhelming place and having to try to keep up with the world in spite of illness sabotages the healing process. It’s your classic “vicious cycle”. Call me crazy, but I think the only sane way to react to such a situation is with a little anxiety.