Signs, Symptoms, and a Story

Before you read on I just want to mention that I will be talking about signs and symptoms based off of my experience. But among Lyme warriors this can range drastically.

Growing up my symptoms were back pain (scoliosis), frequent headaches, and ear and throat infections (due to an already weaker immune system).  For the most part these were not debilitating, and I could lead a fairly busy “normal” life.

Here’s a little look into my life: I was homeschooled for all my years of school. One of the better parts of this was the flexibility in my schedule. It left room for things like piano lessons, swimming, and ballet, just to name a few.
Looking back there were already signs and symptoms then. Such as hyper flexibility (from a connective tissue disorder), shaky hands, OCD, headaches, back pain, and some other things here and there.

At around the age of (roughly) 14 I became actively involved in the prolife movement working with organizations like We Need a Law, Ottawa Against Abortion, and The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR). I had a lot of incredible experiences with this work, one of the most memorable ones was traveling across the Country during the 2015 election spreading the prolife message.
Over the years I also took a crash course with CCBR and joined the staff of Ottawa Against Abortion, doing activism.
The biggest health struggles during this period were back pain, 2 concussions (I did this work until my 2016 concussion), headaches, depression (and self harm on a couple occasions) and the beginnings of an eating disorder.....I’ll do a post later about mental illnesses in my life.

I also had the opportunity to travel to Australia and Papua New Guinea. I spent months there visiting relatives, and to help look after my cousins (surrounding the birth of the newest child).  This was a very eye opening experience.  If you’d like you can take a look at my old travel blog to see some pictures from that trip: sjaniebeyondtheshire.blogspot.ca

In late fall of 2015 I began working at homesense as a sales associate, merchandiser, cashier, and more (they trained me in most areas of the store). I had some amazing coworkers there which made the 3 hour (1.5 each way) commute worth it.
While working here I started to experience more symptoms. Especially fatigue, headaches, back pain, depression (which would also lead to self harm).
And it was at work that I had my second concussion which triggered the sudden awakening of any hidden Lyme and co infections. 4 days before this concussion I was working 2 full time jobs and helping plan my sister’s wedding as her maid of honour. 3 days before the concussion I was standing up beside my sister on an incredibly special day in her life. Going from all this busyness directly into a health spiral was very hard.

Although the concussion (and it’s wide range of symptoms) finally brought Lyme to the surface, it also complicated the diagnosis process. For a long time we thought we were ‘only’ dealing with a concussion and post concussion syndrome.
These were some of my concussion/Lyme symptoms. I had head pain, head pressure, very tight and sore neck (sometimes they struggled to even do acupuncture because the needle simply couldn’t push through the muscles), light sensitivity, migraines, nausea, digestive problems, full body weakness, insomnia, back pain, muscle pain (all over), bone pain....especially in arms and legs, joint pain, and joint dislocation (especially ribs).  I also noticed a worsening of all my mental illness...depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, self harm, also thoughts and actions related to suicide.

I will leave it at that for now. But I will talk more about my mental illnesses next week. And tomorrow I’ll be talking about some of the less mentioned, or awkward, symptoms of Lyme disease.