Under Our Skin 2: Emergence Page #2

but it's not the same.

You appreciate everything more

and just being able to walk down

the stairs any time you want,

go anywhere you want.

I'm still on medications,

but I'm doing a lot better.

I'm in college.

I'm studying biology,

and I even have a boyfriend,

which I never really

thought was possible.

Right now I'm working

as an e.M.T.,

which is an emergency medical technician.

I drive the ambulance

and take care of patients

in the back of the truck.

At least eight out of 10 times,

a person is, like,

"wait, you can't lift me."

All these moments where

I'm driving the ambulance

on a call or something,

and all of a sudden, I'll be like,

my gosh, I'm driving an ambulance.

How did this happen?

After so many years of being sick,

I was resolved and resigned

to leaving my body.

The idea of coming back into my

body seemed really daunting.

I thought I would either die

or live with this pain forever,

and I'm just so amazed

that I can think clearly again,

and I have pain-free days.

Having the support that I needed

made it all possible.

Really.

It's nice to see you, too.

So, you know, layer by layer,

piece by piece, I came back in.

I'm back.

I'm in my body.

I'm not afraid.

That's not true.

I am afraid.

But I know I can deal with it.

After three years of

treatments in Seattle,

I moved back to the bay area, back home.

I married Tim,

and I've been maintaining my health.

At the clinic, I was recognized often

in the waiting room, and I got to be

an inspiration to people, a hero.

Thanks, guys.

It was a bittersweet time

because, coming home,

everything's the same here,

but I was different.

I miss that community,

and I'm trying to recreate that now.

The comparison between the Mandy

that you saw in the documentary

and the Mandy that's here now,

it's just kind of night

and day difference.

I haven't had to have

any more antibiotics

or drugs or anything.

Drug

that experience just made me

want to go into healthcare

and, you know,

try to change things a little bit.

And I got a job as an

intermediate care nurse,

so I deal with some heavily

compromised patients.

I work 48 to 60 hours a week.

I had one patient, and

they were talking to me,

"yeah, and I was watching

this show on pbs,

and it was about lyme disease,"

and they had no clue

that I was in that documentary.

And so they're talking,

and they're talking,

and then they're kind of like,

"how do you know so much

about lyme disease?"

And I'm like, "saw

the same documentary."

Since nursing school,

I sat for my boards.

I went to Paris.

I went to Italy.

I lived in Costa Rica for a month

helping children.

So, now my next goal is

I have to get really fit.

And that's gonna hurt.

I'm really not looking forward to that,

but...

That's the next goal.

She's used to sharing her life

with the fans of "real

housewives of Beverly Hills,"

but model yolanda foster

has been opening up

and sharing even more lately

about her difficult battle

with chronic lyme disease.

I was struggling for about two years

before I finally was diagnosed.

No joy luck for best-selling

author Amy tan.

Lyme disease nearly killed her career.

Somebody asked me the name

of the book I was working on,

and I couldn't remember.

Another side of Daryl

you might not know about

is he's struggling,

despite all of that money,

with something called lyme disease.

You find out you have it, and suddenly

you're down on the floor.

This is serious stuff.

Angeli vanlaanen.

You probably don't recognize her

without slashing some

serious powder there.

I did battle lyme disease

for over a decade.

I mean, this is unbelievable,

from lyme disease to going to sochi.

I was asked to speak

at a lyme rally in Norway,

and I was invited to stay

with adventurer Lars monsen,

who apparently is one of

the most famous people

in Norway today.

Jordan Fisher Smith, welcome.

You are kind of the equivalent

to Lars monsen in the states, right?

Well, we both had been

working in the outdoors,

in nature all of our lives.

And you have another thing in common,

'cause you also have been

infected by the lyme disease?

Unfortunately.

Now I see the same thing

happening in Norway,

so I'm here to help.

When I got ill, I understood

this is just like a long expedition.

You have to have the same mindset.

- So true.

- Make the same choices.

You know, look ahead

and just choose what thoughts to think.

I think the one thing that being ill,

and, not just with a tick bite,

having a dream and keeping

it through the illness,

that's an important thing.

Don't give up your dream.

I always expected to get better,

meaning that I couldn't imagine

living the way I was living.

The experience of living in a lyme body

is the worst misery I've ever suffered.

It turns your body

into a torture chamber.

I think that I had one attribute

that might have saved me,

that I was trained

as a ranger for 21 years

to recognize a deadly situation

and then being absolutely relentless

in fighting my way out of it.

Everybody's asking me,

why are you better?

What worked for you?

What drug exactly did you take?

The answer I almost always give people

is, pfft, I took all of them.

I was able to stop taking

long-term antibiotics

almost seven years ago now.

The greatest problem that

I see lyme people having

is that they're set in

a public health setting

that is doing its best

to deny them treatment.

You're gonna have to fight for yourself

while feeling awful and not

feeling like doing anything,

and this was certainly

my greatest challenge,

was continuing to fight for myself.

When I shared my story

in "under our skin,"

I sort of became this poster child

for lyme disease, and that frightened me.

Because in some ways,

it kept me in my story,

and people felt like they wanted to share

all their symptoms with me.

And sometimes it would overburden me

when I was still really sick.

So I was resistant to

talking about lyme disease

for about five years

because I didn't want

to talk about this bug

and this hideous illness.

I wanted to talk about

what it means to heal

and what that journey looks like.

I think that's where I get healed,

when I can help people

that have gone through

the same thing that I have.

So, with "lyme less, live more,"

we really wanted to bring

people into our world

and really meet some of the people

that have been so

inspirational in our journey.

We're so lucky and happy

to have Dietrich here today

to answer a lot of your questions.

If you have lyme disease,

by my definition,

it means also you belong

to a tribe here on the planet

that is more conscious

and more sensitive,

and also more likely to do

something once you recover

that will be a benefit for all of us.

I think we need to look

at people with lyme disease

or chronic illness as indicators.

They're indicating the

problems in our environment,

in our world, and this

disconnection we have.

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