Over the last eight months, I’ve been in post-treatment Lyme life, allowing me to be more social. With that comes the dreaded social interactions where I have to explain why I’m tired, am not drinking, or need to go home early.
To my peer group’s defense, we are twenty-somethings. Most of us, it seems, are pretty healthy and don’t have many cares in the world… Except maybe getting too drunk last Saturday and feeling it Monday, so the upcoming happy hour networking event will be a little more painful than usual.
So when confronted with chronic illness, I have seen a lot of different reactions from my fellow yuppies. While some are expected, others are actually kind of shocking.
“Oh that should be pretty easy to treat, right?”
“So… your joints must hurt really bad then, huh?”
“From a TICK?”
“Can I catch it from you?”
“Oh wow… My cousin/sister/best friend/mom/acquaintance has it. They aren’t doing very well.”
