What are Your Thoughts?
So many blog posts and articles devoted to Lyme disease deal with treatment protocols, personal experience, political debate, medical debate, insurance disputes, and technical discoveries.
What we really want to read about is, “How are we going to be cured?” “How much will it cost?”, “How long will it take?”
But without the possibilities of answers to such questions, we are intrigued to learn about how others cope, and about every possible aspect of chronic Lyme disease and how if does or could affect us.
However, there is a critical aspect of healing from Lyme that is conspicuously missing. So much of what is written about Lyme disease and shared on forums and blogs – even some of the most important documents available to the layperson about Lyme fail to mention this vital component of recovery.
Sometimes you may glimpse a short blurb on a private post, or even a long treatise on a blog or website. Also, there are sometimes references in various books from religious perspectives that potentially “tune the reader out”, to scholarly books that potentially put the reader to sleep.
“What in the world is Jenna blogging about?” you are certainly wondering.
I am blogging about the essential concept of positive thinking in each and every treatment protocol for Lyme disease. Have you seen it? Do you read about it? Can you show me the testing that has been done?
Heather Whitestone, Miss America in 1995, is known for saying, “The most handicapped person in the world is a negative thinker.”
I think you will agree with me that this quote is downright bizarre coming from a glamorous and successful “Miss America” - a position that is won only through rigorous physical fitness, exceptional talent, extreme beauty and fierce intellect – the ferocious competitiveness required discourages even some of the most beautiful women from attempting such an honor.
But honestly, how in the heck would a “Miss America” know anything about negative thinking?
Well, believe it or not, Heather Whitestone, almost died as an infant, and lost all of her hearing as a result of the life threatening fever.
Throughout her childhood, Heather didn’t have to listen to the dark and depressing voices of discouragement that others around her discussed. She also didn’t hear the doctor telling her family that she wouldn’t develop past a third grade level.
And no, she never heard the vulgar language that was thrown at her, and around her through her formative adolescent years. She never heard the voices that predicted the little girl who dreamed of being a ballerina would never be able to speak let alone dance ballet.
A difficult motto that tortures and/or inspires those of us with Lyme disease is to “embrace our disease as a blessing.” Presented here, perhaps we can appreciate the irony, and share in the amazing inner strength that Heather found to draw upon.
Heather’s deafness truly was a blessing, but only because she made it so.
At the young age of eleven years old, Heather asked her family to send her to a special school to enable her to catch up academically with other students in her class.
While at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, Missouri, Heather learned two grade levels per year! After three difficult but exciting years there, Heather caught up with her peers, and returned to Alabama to graduate from public high school with a very respectable 3.6 GPA.
Money was tough at home so Heather began competing in beauty pageants to earn the valuable scholarship money that was needed to attend college. Twice, Heather qualified for the Miss Alabama pageant only to come home with second place. How much more could she take? She was ready to quit.
Her family and friends stepped in with much needed encouragement to try one more time. After all, it had taken Heather six years to correctly pronounce her last name, so what was a measly two years? And so it was that on her third attempt in1994, Heather was selected as Miss Alabama.
Three months later, Heather was whisked away to Atlantic City, New Jersey to compete with 49 other accomplished women for the honor of Miss America.
Heather stayed focused on her own reliance on positive thinking; contemplating what this victory would mean for handicapped people all over the world.
Stunning the audience and the world with a magnificent ballet routine performed to Christian vocalist Sandi Patti’s Via Dolorosa, she was the last to know of her final standing because she couldn’t hear the announcer!
During her year as Miss America, Heather introduced the world to her five-point “STARS” program with the help of her family members and close friends.
Perhaps those of us with Lyme disease should adopt this strategy as part of our own treatment protocol.
“STARS” was aimed at showing others how to achieve “Success Through Action and Realization of your dream”S”.”
The five points the program rested on were:
* a positive attitude;
* a goal;
* a willingness to work hard;
* a realistic look at your problem;
* a support team.
Most of us have at least three out of the five – maybe even four, but if you will allow me to take a huge psychic plunge for a moment, I would say that it is the first point of STARS that hangs us up.
We want to be positive, and some days we actually enjoy moments of positive thinking, but how do we make positive thinking a fundamental part of each day? How do we make it a part of our healing protocol?
If any reader has some strategies for this, please share them because, as James Allen (and others) taught, “A man is literally what he thinks.” This is taught in every language.
For those of us with Lyme, we might do even better if we follow the advice of William Feather, “…success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
Please don’t let go! And keep thinking those positive thoughts too!
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December 30th, 2008 at 4:13 am
Read if you live in the Republic of Ireland
I am a Lyme’s sufferer in Ireland. I have been sick for a year and a half and only got a diagnosis with-in the last month. I am very concerned over the lack of Lyme’s awareness among the health care professionals, and too the public, in the republic of Ireland. In the early stages of my disease I was actually told by an A&E doctor in Tralee General that, “There is no Lyme’s in Ireland”. Most of the people I talk to are totally unaware that they, or someone in their family, could contract Lyme’s disease while in their own garden. The Irish seem to believe that Lyme’s, if they have even heard of it, is an American disease.
If like me, you suffer from Lyme’s, or have a family member or friend in Ireland who are afflicted with this disease and have experienced unnecessary delay in diagnosis, inadequate or incompetent treatment by Irish health care providers or general ignorance at the public level, then I ask you to join me in an effort to raise awareness of this disease.
I am currently undertaking to create a catalog of individual experiences of Irish Lyme’s sufferers. I plan to submit them to the Irish Patient’s Association, with a view to engaging their assistance in urging the Health Board into action to raise awareness of Lyme’s at professional and public levels in the Republic. Please take the time to write down your experience and email it to me at ticktalkireland@yahoo.co.uk. Please be aware your testimony may be compiled with others and presented in the near future to public officials. There is strength in numbers.
I know that this will take a great effort. It is especially difficult, at a time of sickness, to invest effort in any but the most necessary of basic daily functions. To even compose this posting has taken exhaustive work for me. I have had to work on this posting in stages, taking rest between paragraphs or even sentences, as needs be. But we must focus on improvement in the future. It gives me great grief to think that there could be someone in Ireland at this moment still searching for an answer to their illness, due to lack of information, just as I was myself only a month ago. Maybe even the parents of some poor child might now be looking for answers. Lyme’s knows no social, economic, gender, religious or ages bounds. Please join with me in this effort. Take the time to email me with your experience or your interest in promoting Lyme’s awareness in Ireland.
Please keep submissions to ticktalkireland@yahoo.co.uk to factual events in your diagnostic and treatment experience in the Republic of Ireland. Dates of illness, and ensuing diagnostic progress, names of clinics and doctors you visited would be appreciated. Please try to keep it as brief and specific as possible. You name must be used and contact details. These testimonies will be submitted to the Irish Patient’s Association and the Irish Health Board. Stand up and be counted, or be counted OUT!
December 31st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Janet - I would welcome a whole post from you on the status of Lyme in Ireland - email me privately and I will do all that I can to help!
Thanks for your comment and my sincere condolences on your suffering!
Jenna