How I Gained a Sense of Power Over My Disease

Why I named the Lyme bacteria invading my body

Today I want to share with you how I gained a sense of power over my disease. It’s sort of a silly little story but I hope you will find it beneficial. As I’ve shared many times already, I felt so scared and alone throughout my treatment. Answers were hard to find and understanding for my predicament was even more elusive. For this reason, I want to share with you a particularly trying day early on in my treatment. It’s the story of why I named the Lyme bacteria invading my body.

What is the bacteria that causes Lyme disease and why is it so invasive?

First, a little science to explain why I envisioned my Lyme bacteria as an invader that needed a name as I battled to eradicate it. Lyme disease is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. I find it to be a particularly cruel type of bacteria in that it has a spirochete shape. To put it simply, it looks, and functions, like a corkscrew worm. Even its shape screams, “I’m an invader!”

This corkscrew shape allows it to literally drill into anything it comes into contact with. It can screw itself into muscles, bones and organs, including the brain and nervous system. To add insult to injury, given time to proliferate, it can develop multiple morphological variants. These variants act as its defenses, making it more difficult to kill. As I followed my treatment protocol, I imagined thousands of tiny alien worms getting stabbed in their tiny alien heads, killing them off one by one. Along with the collective name I had given them, I was one badass warrior.

The day I named my invader

I named the Lyme bacteria invading my body on day one of my treatment. The conversation began after my husband and I watched the documentary Under Our Skin. My doctor had recommended we watch it during my first appointment, which served to commence my treatment. While it is an excellent documentary, I’m not sure it was the best way for me to start my battle.

The first image I remember of this documentary is of a young woman, about my age, with blond hair like me, struggling to walk across her lawn. The look of fear and desperation is forever etched into my memory. I was immediately terrified. Is that what it’ll be like for me? Will I be too weak and feeble to stroll down the street?  Needless to say, after about twenty minutes of the documentary, I collapsed in my kitchen with huge tears streaming down my cheeks.

My husband had looked over at me just in time to see the tears burst forth and witness my collapse to the floor. He exclaimed, “Okay, that’s enough of that.” I heard him running over the carpeting to grab the remote and shut off the T.V. Then he rushed over to where I sat, crumpled into a ball, silently weeping.

That documentary was a brutal awakening to what the next weeks, months and years would be like. Although my husband did his best to stay strong for me, I could see the anxiety in his eyes too. He is a problem-solver and I could see the wheels turning behind the anxiety. Later that evening, after he calmed me down, it was my husband who suggested we name my invader.

His explanation was that naming it would give it a face and solidify its culpability for what was happening to me. It offered a tangible quality to an elusive enemy. Naming my invader gave me power over my disease. I watch a lot of horror movies, so the rationale I drew from the concept was akin to the dominance gained over a demon by knowing its name. Giving those tiny alien worms a name allowed me to slay them with a sense of courage. By naming my intruder, I had dominance over it.

I named the bacteria invading my body Calvin

My husband and I had recently viewed the horror film Life. It is a fantastic sci-fi thriller set on a spaceship hurdling through space. The shuttle crew’s mission is to find alien life forms and study them. The specimen they find seems harmless at first, cute even, and so they give it a name. Unfortunately for them, naming the alien life form did not give the crew power over it. The seemingly innocent, tiny specimen grows and gains strength until it wreaks havoc on the shuttle crew. It turns into a truly terrifying invader. We decided to name the elusive, corkscrew-shaped alien worm wreaking havoc in my body after the horrifying alien in the movie Life. We named it Calvin. It seemed an apt name for my inimical intruder.

Naming my invader Calvin gave me a sense of power over my disease. Now, when I thought of the bacteria, I imagined one big enemy instead of thousands of elusive invaders. The image of a tangible form allowed me to attack it with precision instead of swinging wildly at something invisible. I would wake up in the morning, put on my metaphorical boxing gloves, and start pounding away at Calvin. When I was angry and scared, I would curse and scream at Calvin. It was a form of catharsis, to take the focus off how terrible I felt and blame it on Calvin. I hated Calvin and looked forward to the day he was eradicated, never to return.

Remember, you have power over your disease

My darkest days during treatment came when I surrendered to the fear and loneliness that wormed its way into my psyche. By contrast, when I stopped playing the victim and imagined myself a warrior against Calvin, my days were more manageable. I remembered that I had power over my disease. Naming my invader was one of the many ways I coped with the bacteria invading my body. Let me know if you decide to try this little trick my husband invented. How does it make you feel? What kind of mental images does it elicit? Most importantly, I hope it gives you a sense of power over your disease.