NAP 22

The Lyme support group meets today. It is good to go to the Lyme support group. Only due to Lyme Disease, I can't go to the Lyme support group. Although I may no longer have Lyme Disease, my body is still recovering from having had Lyme Disease.

Which means I need to take a nap every day. And the Lyme support group meets at nap time.

"Flaming June" Frederick Leighton 1895

WRITERS WITH DOGS (AND SOMETIMES WITH ILLNESSES)

Virginia Woolf with her cocker spaniel Pinka

 
Recorded books have been a life line throughout my illness, from the eight dark years without a diagnosis, through to my current transition off antibiotics.

 I just finished listening to a good book, called Shaggy Muses, by Maureen Adams. It’s about five women writers and their dogs: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf.

 
Although I love my dog and consider myself a writer, I was wary of this book. Writing about dogs has the potential for turning into drivel! Maureen Adams avoided this, using the angle of dog ownership to create concise, engaging biographies of each writer. Each biography was just long enough, without being too long. (Happily, these were no five-volume chronicles of Winston Churchill’s life.)

Edith Wharton liked lap dogs.

I was also struck by how many of these writers lived within limitations, due to physical or mental illness. Nonetheless, they managed successful careers as writers, and during times when writing as a woman meant swimming against strong social currents.
 

 

Cleopatra keeping me company!

CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME and LYME DISEASE

From 1999 to 2007 doctors told me I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or that I had food allergies, or that I had a psychological problem.

My family doctor ran a test for Lyme disease that came back negative. I didn't know that test was wildly inaccurate. She didn't either. She implied I'd made my illness up, and told me if I exercised a little more every day I would get better. That bad advice haunted me for years.

I'd been a cross country runner and a rugby player. But now every time I tried to walk a few blocks, I ended up in bed for days.

"A sick girl" by Mikhail Nesterov 1928

In 2007, a doctor who was knowledgeable about Lyme testing and Lyme disease diagnosed me with the illness. Once I started antibiotic treatment, everything changed.