Chapter One: The Manhattan(ville) Project

Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York

"If You Want To Hear God Laugh...Tell Him Your Plans."

2002 started off as a great and promising year. I had finished my two-year degree from Westchester Community College and even received a near full scholarship to attend Manhattanville College in the fall for my bachelor’s. Life was good and my potential and enthusiasm towards this event was unparalleled. 

I started off college life with a bang, getting my hands into everything I could – I led study groups, began piano lessons, and even became an active member in the school program for Habitat for Humanity. It was there that I met a girl on the volleyball team who, after learning my history playing volleyball, invited me one day to come practice with them. I eagerly went expecting nothing but a day of fun, but while playing, was caught by the coach’s eye and ever since, was diligently and repeatedly asked to join the team. I finally accepted her request. Looking back, it was the worst mistake I’d ever make in my life.

Working at Habitat for Humanity, Early Fall 2002

We were in practice one day when it happened. How something so seemingly insignificant could ultimately alter the course of my life will forever baffle me. I simply fell – that was it. We had been scrimmaging against each other, the ball came my way, I called it, went after it, and collided into one of my teammates who apparently hadn’t realized it was mine. I landed flat on my sacral-iliac joint and didn’t get up. A thought ran through my head at that very moment that still haunts me to this day – “I wonder how that just changed my life…?” 

I didn’t get up, not because I was hurt, I actually felt no pain at all at the time. I was just stunned that I was on the ground, not realizing what had happened, and that thought I had had was just so weird… Once I saw that everyone was surrounding me, I snapped out of it, jumped to my feet and said I was fine. Hell, we even finished the rest of the game.

It wasn’t until a week later that it started – PAIN. Unrelenting, agonizing, searing pain filled the corners of my lower back. Pain relievers couldn't touch it, and it was so severe, that I would lay sleeplessly at night curled into a fetal position wondering what was wrong with me.

The next few weeks were a blur. Doctor after doctor, test after test – nothing panned out. No herniation, no abnormality to speak of, no reason for this horrific pain that now began to slowly creep up my lower back to the rest of my spine. I was given painkillers and sleep-aids only to wake up in a sweat covered panic and…pain. I was relentless in my pursuit for an answer – I felt myself being taken over by something so unbelievably strong and was desperately trying to fight it, but no one had an answer for me.

Once the pain reached my neck and head a whole new phenomena happened. First went my motor co-ordination skills. I awoke one morning drenched in sweat, my body trembling with a kind of panic and dread that I had never known before. I tried to get out of bed to turn the light on, but missed the very visible switch by a mile and fell flat over my desktop and onto the floor. I shuffled up and tried to get to my bureau only to run into it instead, waking my roommate who, by now, must have assumed I was on drugs.

Next went my cognitive abilities and the steadiness of my emotional state. I would drive down roads I had crossed a thousands times before and suddenly have absolutely no idea where I was or where I was headed to. My short-term memory completely went and I would forget almost everything said, written or seen within hours of it being so. I could no longer absorb new information anymore – my grades plummeted. My emotional state would go from elated joy to inexplicable crying to murderous rage to acting like I was drunk - all in the matter of minutes. I also started to have horrific nightmares, nightmares full of blood and gore and things I never imagined possible (Note: NOT a slasher fan!). It seemed that sleep couldn’t even escape me from this newfound horror my life had become.

Then came the peripheral nervous system neuralgia. Tingling, numbness, random muscle spasms, fire and electric shock- like sensations coursed throughout my skin. Every time I closed my eyes it felt like a million ants were crawling all over me and as though the top of my head was literally on fire.

This was my breaking point. You see, this wasn’t some kind of progression where one symptom ends and another begins. Rather, they all just started to pile on – one after the other, and the totality of them all experienced at the same time, and in unison, finally broke me - I went to the hospital.

A negative spinal tap and an elaborate blood work-up led to the conclusion that I still had Lyme. I was given a prescription for antibiotics and told to follow up with my primary healthcare practitioner within the week. When I did follow up however, my doctor wasn’t exactly thrilled at the diagnosis, retested me for Lyme – which now came back negative, and told me to discontinue the antibiotics with the recommendation that what I really needed was a psychiatrist.

I had been on the antibiotics given to me by the hospital for a couple days and stopping them seemed to have the affect of exacerbating my already tormented system. I could no longer even think clearly and was convinced I was crazy. I drove myself back to the college and told the psychiatrist there that I needed to be committed. When I explained my story and my symptoms to her, an angered expression crossed her face and she insisted that I did indeed have Lyme disease and that it was now so progressed that it had invaded my Central Nervous System. She told me that Doxy wouldn’t cut it and that I should try Amoxicillin, as it was one of the few antibiotics that had a shot at crossing the blood-brain barrier.

At first I didn’t know what to believe anymore. But when my symptoms continued to progress to having joint pain in every single facet of my body along with racing, obsessive, suicidal, even homicidal thoughts, as well as extreme photophobia that eventually led to agoraphobia – all of which I mentioned to the psychiatrist - I did as she instructed, left school – losing my hard-earned scholarship and went home to find a Lyme Specialist that could help me.