Susan Pogorzelski

“You never know what’s around the corner.” This has been the motto I’ve repeated relentlessly these last few months to help get me through events I haven’t had the heart to share here, emotions I’m still trying (and most days failing) to unpack. It’s like one sucker punch after another, and I’m desperately trying to hold it all together as I try so hard to be there for the people I care about, even as I struggle to take care of myself. For a while, I was actually doing okay

My latest essay from the Global Lyme Alliance blog describes my 16-year journey to diagnosis. GLA created the above graphic to go along with the essay, and seeing my life laid out in a timeline like that was a powerful reminder of everything I've been through, everything I've overcome, and everything I'm still working so damn hard to heal. It's not easy being reminded of how much of my life--my childhood, my adolescence--I've lost to this disease. It's not easy to remember th

Sometimes I look back on all those years and doctors, and I’m stunned by the flippancy with which I was treated. Yet I know even my experiences are tame in comparison to what I’ve heard from other Lyme patients. I remember a time when yet another doctor scolded me for looking up my symptoms on the internet, for not trusting him to do his job. But it was only by trusting myself that there was something more going on here, that there was some complex piece to this health puzzle