So how do I know its Lyme disease? (Part the second)

So, intrepid reader, we left off where your heroine had found herself a treatment that worked...

Well, it did. Not completely, I still had bad days, and hot weather is still a problem, but I was feeling much better.

Except, I still had cognitive problems that resembled ADD and I was still vulnerable to every virus that my kids brought home from school. And I was still taking waaay more ibuprofen than is healthy

Taking advantage of my new lease on life, I joined the local volunteer fire dept and found a new passion. I trained as a basic EMT and discovered that I love it. In the absence of children and husband and Lyme disease, I could easily see tranplanting to a major city and working in EMS. One of my aliasis is Ambulance Geek.

I love it.

Partly the thrill, partly because emergency medicine is Western medicine at its very best. I ride with my towns VFD and I road with the ambulance service out of the bigger town next to us for a bit. Sadly, Lyme interfered. Riding with both services was just plain too much for me. Lots of symptoms came back until I went back to just riding with my local service.

I also enrolled in the local Community college. I really would love to go to nursing school. Perhaps in ER nursing. Alas, yet again Lyme intereferes (hmm, this is starting to become a running theme). I suddenly started having really severe headaches. First they thought migraine then they thought trigeminal neuralgia or something called episodic hemialgia. In plain English, this means that sometimes my head hurts. Interestingly I noticed a slight facial droop on the right side of my face.

Still and all, I was feeling pretty well. Well enough that I enrolled in an Outward Bound course.
That was wonderful. I went dogsledding for a week in New Hampshire. I had spent the winter training for it pretty assiduously even though in November I had to have my gall bladder removed and we still hadn't gotten a handle on my headaches.

Just before I left on my dogsledding trip, DR called me and said that he wantedto test me for Lyme disease. I figured "what the hell" and went and got the very expensive test run and didn't think too much about it till I got back.

Continued...