(Battling Chronic Lyme During High School)
Josey Buzby was just starting high school when ongoing health issues and ANXIETY forced her to do homebound (online) schooling.
Key Takeaways:
- “I wanted the normalcy of seeing my friends every day.”
- I wanted to be in school. But I couldn’t stay awake, let alone remember anything.
- The fluorescent lights hurt my eyes.
- The short term memory loss and not being able to speak the right words (word loss) and the right time made school almost impossible. (4:00)
- Lyme turned my life upside-down.
- Anxiety and “weird pains” were my first symptoms.
- “I know something is wrong”
- After being fired by my physician who didn’t believe I had Lyme. I was sent on an incredibly weird, awful but exciting journey to find out what was wrong. (7:00)
- My moods were out of control. (The anti-hulk medication)
- My mom really fought to figure out what was going on.
- “I did a 180-degree turn as a human.”
- “Lyme is horrible. It’s this thing you can’t see. You can’t see Lyme.”
- Even if I don’t get better, I can still watch people grow. (17:00)
- I never thought I could be a functional member of society.
- You can laugh or you can cry, when situations are out of your control. We choose to laugh.
- Comedy was a way to cope with what was going on.
- You give people in your life “select information” because you don’t want to freak them out.
- My friends had to make a choice to “stay with me” and I had to make a choice to “let them stay” in my life. (I didn’t want people to see me if I hadn’t showered in days)
- We shut a lot of people out, because they don’t understand what is going on.
- I didn’t want to know anything about Lyme disease. I didn’t want to watch the movies or read any of the books. My mom went into research mode, I didn’t want to know anything.
- “To LIVE would be an awfully big adventure”= my survival TATTOO
(I couldn’t get it until I was done with treatment)
- “My Mom is the whole reason I lived.”
- After being homebound for years. Reengaging with society was hard. I kept wondering if I could make friends again.
- What if I can’t make friends anymore?
- Training to be an EMT forced me to interact.
- You feel like you have been robbed.
- What would you say to other teens battling Lyme during highschool? “I’m sorry you have no control. But you’ll get it back. Take the small wins as they come.”
- You can be a human again!
- It felt unreal to have normal worries.
- “This is what normal people do.”
- When you want to give up, you have to find something to look forward too.”