So, several people in my life are and have been experiencing the symptoms of Lyme Disease — not unlike one of my favorite’s on my guilty pleasure, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Yolanda.
I didn’t start to investigate Lyme Disease until my new partner’s adult children were in treatment for the illness and then I began looking into it as the Housewives’ franchise star started her arduous treatments.
It’s not like I’m addicted to the RHBH — or whatever acronym is assigned, I’m not invested enough to use the proper nomenclature. Particularly, since I read an article regarding the spoof/parody of the Hotwives of Las Vegas, which I found last year on Youtube.
link to article — great read.. http://decider.com/2015/08/18/hotwives-of-orlando-hotwives-of-vegas/
A brilliant piece that mirrored my opinion of my need to watch pretty people with cash behave badly — I encourage a full read of Kayla Cobb’s piece from the link above. It says a load about our culture, particularly that of women and some straight and definitely gay men.
“I like to think I have pretty good taste in television. When it comes to music, I’m always at least two years too late to the party. Movies? It feels like as soon as I see the latest critical darling, I’m already five indie films behind. But TV is where I shine. That being said, for a large amount of my television career, I was afflicted with a binging disease that has taken hold of most of the American population.” Kayla Cobb, Decider.com August 2015
My Confession:
- I used RHWBH binging on hulu as a tool to mitigate boredom since 2011
- With science and business career a bust, this was somewhere to express inner cattiness
- Some of the characters were such a mess
- Made me feel a little better about myself and I didn’t have to solve their make believe problems; as I had plenty of my own
- The Clothes gave some ideas of what line to walk fashion wise ~
- sometimes just of what to steer clear — admit to over-correcting at moments, sigh
So, then, I found Hotwives of Las Vegas and Ms. Cobb’s article and felt better about my past time — funny women making hay and ha, ha , ha about the obsession that I would shutter myself in so my serious world wouldn’t know that I engaged in such frivolous things as Series Finales’ and all their cat fights and tears.
Back to Lyme Disease — It’s all about Tick’s
I’ll admit, bereft of any way to watch new episodes of Hotwives of LV; I relapsed and had to settle for Buzzfeed on youtube re: RHWBH — that’s when everyone was discussing whether Yolanda’s illness was real.
Knowing that my spouse’s children were adult, responsible people that have great careers and are suffering and getting treatment for what the Dr.’s suspect is Lyme Disease it was determinedly important subject. They aren’t the types to just have the disease du jour.
I had experienced my own mysterious ailments for over 4 years; something we couldn’t diagnose. (I do admit to having been diagnosed with UGO’s on my brain “Un-Identified Glowing Objects” is the favored medical term of the MS MD that did the MRI -Stars and what-not on my brain according to the MRI — could’ve been dropped as a child the doctor said, could be MS, could be from the migraines, medicine is such an inexact science he said: He also definitely agreed with me it had nothing to do with the lifestyle choices I made in the ‘80’s.
Anyway, back to Lyme, after considering the issues at hand, and then Yolanda and her kids, well, that’s when my inner researcher had to scratch that itch, or rather, catch that tick— That’s when I hopped off youtube and I went on a quest for answers.
Here are some other symptoms of Lyme disease from WebMD:
What Are the Symptoms of Lyme Disease?
In the early stages of Lyme disease, you may experience flu-like symptoms that can include a stiff neck, chills, fever, swollen lymph nodes, headaches, fatigue, muscle aches, and joint pain. You also may experience a large, expanding skin rash around the area of the tick bite. In more advanced disease, nerve problems and arthritis, especially in the knees, may occur.
The Deer Dear Tick seems to be the culprit.
According to WebMD if you spend time in a wooded area and are surrounded by flies and large animals like horses or Deer the infected tick may find it’s way to exposed skin and bite. It may not hurt enough to cause you a sensation, but, if left untreated it may spread through your system, causing problems with your neurological system:
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Neurological symptoms. Lyme disease can also affect the nervous system, causing symptoms such as stiff neck and severe headache (meningitis), temporary paralysis of facial muscles (Bell's palsy), numbness, pain or weakness in the limbs, or poor coordination. More subtle changes such as memory loss, difficulty with concentration, and a change in mood or sleeping habits have also been associated with Lyme disease. People with these latter symptoms alone usually don't have Lyme disease as their cause.
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Nervous system abnormalities usually develop several weeks, months, or even years following an untreated infection. These symptoms often last for weeks or months and may recur. These features of Lyme disease usually start to resolve even before antibiotics are started. Patients with neurologic disease usually have a total return to normal function.
So, if I adopt Lyme disease as my culprit to my health issues, I may explain away my ‘slippy brain’, lack of new aspirations or creative innovations and my tendency to stay up way past my bedtime. Moodiness, meh, I can cure that with St. John’s Wort..