Passing Out Due To Pain

Chronic Lyme Disease

Last week it happened to me again… Passing out due to an overload of pain. With this post I will try to shed a light on what this exactly means with the purpose of letting you know more about what it is to have Chronic Lyme Disease.

The last few weeks and months have been horrible for me. Even worse than the months before. This itself is not a surprise as I often have my worse months in the fall and winter. For example I always catch the flu when the “flu season” arrives as a result of my weak immune system. But over the last 2 months I have not been able to leave the house at all. I mostly lie in bed trying to cope with all of my symptoms and the excruciating pain. My symptoms vary from having high fever, feeling nauseated and feeling weak to having more severe standard symptoms (muscle and joint pains, nerve pain, headaches and fatigue).

Aside from a weekend with friends in September I have not been able to do anything.

I am not writing this to whine or complain about it, but to give an image of how the last few months have been for me. Let’s call it the “build-up” that led to this episode.

Last week it happened… After a “standard” day in the house I felt a little weaker than I normally feel. I am having a lot of trouble to manage my pain every single day and most days I fail trying to control it. This often leads to insomnia. On average I sleep about 6 hours a day. So the image that we Chronic Lyme Disease patients are sleeping a lot due to fatigue is not correct. Actually, the opposite cannot be truer. In general I can manage my pain with mental focus and a few paracetamols. I stopped using heavy painkillers (morphine, naproxen, diclofenac etc.) a while ago as they do not work well enough and my body often experiences the negative side-effects of those pills. However, sometimes the pain level rises so high that my body cannot process it anymore and literally shuts down. And there I go… *OUT*

I can best describe this as fainting due to the pain. As I am often in bed when this happens I do not fall down or anything. But I am “gone”. This feels very weird as it’s not like going to sleep or anything. I still have some sort of consciousness, but I lose control over my entire body. I like to describe this a computer that overheats… The system shuts down, cools off and then slowly reboots. My body does the same thing. In this process I can do nothing more than to just wait it out. And slowly regain my senses and little by little regain control over my body again. When this happens I feel awful, nauseated, disorientated and I do not have any notion of time.

When I regain the ability to walk I will go to the bathroom having to vomit. Often laying there for over an hour only to go to bed again with shaking limbs. In bed I slowly come to life again. This whole process, from start to finish, lasts a couple of hours and is no fun to say the least.

I did not have these problems for the last couple of years. Not only was I stronger than I am now, but I did not have these excruciating pains. This “passing out” happened for the 4th time this year. The last time this happened was during the World Cup of Soccer this Summer. Not long after my 10K Run to create awareness for Lyme Disease. The “lows” like to exchange my “highs” fast and furiously. We can say that this disease follows a grim course.

It’s hard to put in words what goes through me when something like this happens. But to put it mildy… These are moments that test my strength and perseverance to keep fighting for my life. There is still no known cure for Chronic Lyme Disease and with that there is little prospect of improvement. There is little to no hope. I will never surrender, but to state that moments like this do not make it easy is an understatement.

For those of you interested in my complete story, please see the video below. For now I’d like to thank you all for reading this post and the attention that you gave this post! More awareness is always welcome! I also like to wish all my fellow Lyme Warriors a lot of strength… Stay Strong!

— Never Surrender –

Charlie

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10K Marathon Amersfoort + Lyme Awareness Video