by Jennifer Crystal
This time of year can be a tease. With daylight savings time, the sun is suddenly brighter, and there are hints of warmer weather coming, Not surprisingly, we start to think it’s almost spring. Birds chirp. Early flowers bloom. People are smiling again. Then a late-season storm hits. The flowers are buried, the outraged birds squawk, and people become more downcast than in the deepest throes of a January freeze. We curse and wonder if spring will ever come.
Every year when this seasonal give and take happens, I’m reminded of my long, uphill battle against tick-borne disease. At first, when I was bedridden and sick, it was always winter. I saw no hope of a metaphorical spring. But the longer I was on treatment and the harder I worked at adjunct therapies, the more glimpses of health I received. Eventually I started having strings of good days. My head was clearer; I could type and read short articles, I could walk short distances. My joints didn’t hurt. I sometimes made it a full week without a migraine. I felt like I was actually making progress.
Then I’d get walloped with a Herxheimer reaction. My body would get overloaded with dead bacteria killed off by the antibiotics. This was a good thing, but the drugs were killing spirochetes at a faster rate than my body could eliminate them, which made me suddenly feel awful. I crashed as if I’d been hit by a freakblizzard.
These glimmers of health, of spring, can feel like teases, but they’re not. They are, in fact, signs of what’s to come. Eventually, my Herxheimer reactions became fewer and I had more good days than bad. That took a long time to achieve. I was almost a year on intravenous antibiotics. Then I felt good for two seasons before completely relapsing back to winter. But even then, my body fought its way back to remission.
The trajectory is different for each Lyme patient, because no two cases are alike, and co-infections can complicate treatment and recovery. Some patients feel better in a matter of weeks or months. Some are sick for years. Some “herx” every couple weeks and follow a relatively steady cycle of that pattern; some get shorter or longer periods between herxes, with little to no warning when they will manifest.
For all of these patients, remember, spring is possible.
I lost several years of my life to tick-borne illnesses. Even when it was beautiful and warm outside, I was in bed. I felt stuck in endless winter. Then I went through periods with teases of spring. But now, those wintry days are so rare than I can count them on one hand. With maintenance medication and therapies, I’ve stayed in remission for a decade, charting steady improvements each year.
No matter how many late season storms we get, no matter how long the snow lingers on the tips of daffodils, spring eventually arrives. Every single year. If you are a Lyme patient feeling stuck in endless winter, I assure you that your spring will come, too, and the sun will feel even warmer than you imagine.