Callie and Her Journey with Lyme
Meet and read about Callie and Her Journey with Lyme. I met her parents before she was ever a speck in their eyes. Our families were neighbors. Her mom, Lesley, and I were pregnant at the same time with the girls 🙂 It was lovely! Callie was born a couple of weeks before my daughter, V. We raised our big girls together. It has been a blessing to know this family for over 20 years. Please read the story that spurred my desire to have this Lyme Disease Series.
I’m so proud of this young lady; her testimony is one that only God could orchestrate! If you have ANY questions, please feel free to email me at barefootfaithjourney@gmail.com, and I will personally put you in touch with Lesley, and she can share the details of how God chose an unconventional method to heal this sweet beauty of a crapola disease!
There’s No Suffering Without Glory
Callie Emerson
I’m sure if you’ve been keeping up with the Lyme series on Brandi’s blog up to this point, you know quite a bit of my story and a significant amount of information about Chronic Lyme Disease. So while my blog post is based on Lyme awareness and my battle with the disease, I’m hoping that the more incredible message will come across is that no suffering occurs in vain when it is for the glory of God.
Before I delve into all of the medical mess, I want to give a little background information to those reading this. I grew up in a Christian home, and at age seven, I knew that the Father dearly loved me, that I loved Him in return, and that I desperately wanted Jesus to rid me of my sin debt so I could spend my eternity with Him. I want to be clear that I came to know Jesus as my Savior long before I had any medical issues.
My journey with Chronic Lyme Disease
It began in sixth grade when I started to faint at completely random times. I eventually reached the point where I was fainting roughly ten times a day. My symptoms only continued to increase from there. At age 13, my knee pain was so severe that I received steroid shots in both knees and yes, shots in the knee are as awful as they sound.
As I proceeded into eighth grade, my back, shoulder, and neck pain began to develop. By the end of my eighth-grade year, my pain was so severe that I was physically incapable of opening my bottom locker. I relied on others to open my locker for me.
This following symptom, for me, is the hardest one to reflect upon. I began to experience what I now know to be “Lyme rage.” During this time, I was so unkind to my family and even to a couple of close friends. There is no exaggeration when I say that one of my family members could look at me, and I would begin to feel angry. My life was lived in a state of unjustified, uncontrollable anger.
Worst Part
The worst part is that I could feel myself getting angry, so I would try to assess why I was so mad, and even after I couldn’t find a single reason, I found myself unable to stop the anger from welling up inside of me. My family is a fantastic group of people for not only dealing with me during this time but continually showing me grace and love.
At this point, I was angry, sore, and dizzy. I continued, and my symptoms grew worse, and I continued to be given misdiagnoses and pills. Luckily I have an awesome mom who went above and beyond for four years, ignoring ten misinformed doctors to find the only Chronic Lyme Disease expert in the area. We saw this doctor sometime around my sophomore year of high school. I’m not sure if anyone picked up on this idea from my mom’s post, but
GOD’S TIMING IS PERFECT
Right before we discovered this doctor, I went to church camp. While I know, it’s super cheesy, going to camp allowed me a much-needed break from distractions and to learn what it meant to be a Christian. You probably think that you haven’t heard much about my walk with Christ until now, and you’re right. That’s because, at age seven, most of us aren’t dwelling in sin that requires us to make an extreme life change. I made no changes as the years passed, and my spiritual growth was stagnant.
Fortunately, attending camp allowed the Spirit to convict me while I wasn’t distracted by soccer, school, or being sick. I became aware that I behaved well and made good choices because I have strict parents, and that’s how they raised me to act, not because I was trying to live a life worthy of the gospel (Philippians 1:27).
My eyes were opened to what being a Christian entailed, and believing that He had a plan for my illness. Until then, when I asked, I would half-heartedly respond that God had a plan for it. After learning what it meant to follow and pursue Christ, I could finally fully grasp the concept that I was enduring this trial for a purpose.
God had a Plan for Me.
God blessed me by allowing me to understand that He had a plan for this illness right before I entered the most challenging time in my life. I can never communicate how gracious He is for doing so, enabling me to rely on Him wholly during this time. My physical difficulties began when I started taking some powerful oral antibiotics to fight off the Lyme. I reached the point where I was taking roughly 15 pills a day.
During Lyme treatment with antibiotics, your body can respond in weird ways, and often you have to go through phases of feeling worse before you can feel any better. I would wake up for school in the morning and be unable to sit up. I’m not exaggerating when I say I couldn’t move. There would be days that I would make it to school, but I would be sitting at my desk, and I would be in so much pain that I would be on the verge of tears or would be unable to hold my head up without using my hands because of how badly my neck hurt.
Because of how many pills I was taking and how potent the drugs were, I struggled to keep anything down. I threw up almost daily-which defeated the purpose of taking the medications. Because I couldn’t keep all the tablets down, my doctor decided to pursue a different route.
PICC Line Life
At this point in my life, I got two PICC lines. PICC lines are inserted into your arm and run through your vein, all the way to your heart. PICC lines allow IV medicine to be dropped directly into your heart. The PICC line is used because it can reach your entire body much faster. As much fun as this sounds, the whole process can become twice as great as my body begins responding to the medicine.
Random parts of my body would go numb, as much as one entire side of my body would lose all feeling. I would also start shaking uncontrollably. At this point, Lyme’s rage was taken over by random crying. I am completely serious when I say that I would be bawling, but telling my parents that I wasn’t sure why I was crying.
While switching to IV antibiotics prevented me from throwing up medicine, the antibiotics were still so strong that I continued to get sick regularly. During the rough times, I typically ran a fever of 103°F. The physical turmoil the antibiotics put me through left me overly weak. I had to sleep on an air mattress in our living room because it was too difficult for me to walk from my room to the bathroom. My mom even had to sleep next to me on the couch because it was unsafe for me to be left alone all night. Because of this, I missed 50 days of school from August to December of my senior year.
Patterns with My Body’s Response
During this time, we noticed a pattern in my body’s response to antibiotics. After about two weeks, I would become allergic and need to switch medicines. These allergies happened with roughly five different medications. Eventually, I ran out of possible drugs to use to treat Lyme. While contemplating our PICC line options, my PICC line got clogged.
For PICC line users, clogs, infections, and blood clots will force you to remove your line…so at the time, this clog was a big deal. We were able to go to the ER and have it unclogged. In hindsight, the clog was likely God’s kind way of telling me to take it out.
So naturally, my perception skills were not up to par, and I missed this, even after five failed medications and a clog. The night I got my PICC line unclogged, I got a blood clot. That blood clot sent me to the hospital for a week. The PICC line was removed. My mom and I had no idea what type of treatment to pursue next. We felt as if we had exhausted all of our options.
After a Lot of Prayers
God led us to a small homeopathic clinic. This clinic is about 12 hours away from our home in western Kentucky. I will not delve into the details of the treatment that I received. You can obtain that information by contacting my mom if you are interested. I will tell you that after only three days, I felt better than I had in years. Total healing continues for several years after the initial treatment. Two years later, I am still continually improving and adjusting to life as a healthy college student.
Reasonably often, well-meaning friends will ask about my experience with Lyme and say, “Oh my goodness, that’s terrible! I bet you wish you had found that homeopathic clinic sooner.” Or, “I bet you wish you could erase that from your past.” My answer is always no. I don’t answer this way because I am trying to get attention. There is no desire to appear more “religious.” I answer the way I do because I would be vastly different without this season in my life.
This Time of Suffering and Trial
This time of suffering and trial made it clear that God was directing me toward a specific profession. This profession will continue to carry out His will. How many 18-year-olds confidently say they know what job they want to pursue? I cannot stress enough how pivotal this illness has played in my life. It did this by shaping me into who I am today. More importantly, it has firmly rooted my relationship with Jesus.
I’ve thought about my walk with Christ without those six years. Every time I feel the same thing: thank goodness I was sick. God was able to use something so dark in this illness to shed light on my life. He used Lyme Disease to draw me near to Himself.
While I was awakened to the profession, I needed to pursue it to bring Him glory. My time of sickness allowed me to see how I could use this experience. This experience can be used to glorify Him and bring healing to others. All this can be done before I’ve attended graduate school. These are the reasons why I agreed to write this for Brandi’s blog.
God has used my mom and me to share healing personally. We have also been able to share the gospel with over 300 people. Countries include the US, Canada, and Norway. I want you to come away from this post with new knowledge about Chronic Lyme Disease. Hardships you encounter can be used to bring God glory. It can also reveal a purpose for your life that is far beyond what you could have ever conceived.
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