Lyme Treatment Day 4: Invisible

If you read the page on my blog entitled Filling the Rx, I may have left the wrong impression.  I'd like to take a moment and express how much I enjoy going to the pharmacies and laboratories, etc.  It may be hard to understand at first, but I'll try to explain. 

In these places, because they are a medical setting, people notice when you can't stand very long or that you need to touch a wall or a chair to stop swaying with the spinning.  Or that the dark circles under your eyes are a sign of something more than a few nights of missed sleep.   There is extra time when speech is difficult, and no one rolls their eyes or loses their temper because you forgot something or can't keep up.    Of course, there is a general consensus that this rule doesn't ever apply to neurologists!  But generally, there is a courteous respect that happens when you are seen for what your are:  Someone who struggles.

And then you go home.

It's sort of like the Harry Potter stories.  Only the pharmacy is Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where Harry can be his true self and home is the "real" world where muggles live.  I have literally experienced the sensation of jumping through the invisible portal, only it's on my porch instead of a train platform.    You go from a place where your courage and strength and perseverence are recognized even celebrated to a place where you are simply failing to do your job every day. 

I love my family.  I know they love me, but they have said the strangest things to me while I've been sick.  "You just need to get a job."  "You're just depressed, cheer up!"  "You just need more exercise."  "Why can't you handle anything?"  "Everybody gets tired sometimes."  "It's fine, I can see you just don't want to help me."  "You're too upset, are you getting your period?"  "Why can't you take care of the children, don't you love them?"  "Stop being so selfish." 

16 years have gone by without a diagnosis, with no authoritative or tangible proof it is my body that fails and not me.  16 years of not being seen for who I really am.  I live and learn on the other side of the barrier.  The place where muggles can't see you.  I keep trying to bring the ones I love with me, but you have to run to get through the invisible portal.  Muggles typically don't experience a sense of urgency for things they can't prove.  So, they stay put.

You don't need to be sick for this to happen.  Perhaps you talk to God, but they don't.  Maybe you've experienced terrible things, and they haven't.  Maybe you see trouble on the path ahead, but they walk anyway.  Families can be very odd places where the people that are seen everyday, aren't seen at all.

I'm sure the people I love have their own Hogwarts.   This knowlege helps me be very, very patient.  I only hope I am in the right place, on the right platform when they look for the door, so I can follow and run with them to the real world.

Survey:  When was the last time you were seen?  When was the last time you saw?  Matthew 10:7