M y story starts when I was fifteen—when Lyme decided to show me its true colors. At that point, I was a three-sport athlete, honor student, band leader, and an active daughter and sister.
I was pushing hard for my goals, competing in indoor track, playing indoor soccer, and making plans for the future. Life was perfect. Then, it all changed overnight.
I started feeling a strange shaking in my hands, as if my fingers had slipped out of my control. My hands felt foreign, and after tough track workouts, my legs felt like jelly—unstable and unable to carry me. I told my mom, and we chalked it up to dehydration and tried to fix it with home remedies. But each day, things only got worse.
It was race day at the University of New Hampshire’s indoor track, and I was lined up for my 600-meter race. As the race began, something felt off. My body was telling me something I couldn’t ignore. As I finished, I turned to my mom and showed her my shaking hands.
“My smile was replaced by tears, panic attacks, and a sense of foreignness in both my body and mind. I knew something was seriously wrong, but the more tests came back negative, the more my spirit broke.”
“See? This is what I’ve been talking about!” I said, but she replied, “That’s not shakiness, Kath.”
What was wrong?
For the next two years, I felt like I was on an endless carousel of tests, blood draws, appointments, and dead-ends. “Something’s wrong, but we don’t know what,” the doctors would say. Or worse, “Do you think she just wants attention?”………Join or login below to continue reading.
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