Amelia; she/her; Lyme Disease
Lyme Disease is a tick-borne illness that is transferred by tick bite. After the bite, a person may develop a bullseye-shaped rash and flu-like symptoms. For some, antibiotics may cure the disease if caught at this stage, however for many people it is not caught this early. The disease may then start to present other long-term symptoms that are typically difficult for doctors to diagnose due to their variety. The longer diagnosis and treatment take, the longer and more difficult to eradicate the disease may be. Some may never recover and will have life-long symptoms eventually resulting in death as the disease attacks their system. These long-term symptoms can be very different from person to person, but may include unexplained chronic pain, weakness, heart problems, etc. There's no real way of knowing how many people have Lyme disease, but the CDC estimates that it is around 476,000 per year.
This subject was debilitated by a very bad case of Lyme for many years of her childhood and teenage years. She experienced terrible chronic pain and fatigue, as well as other symptoms, and was bedridden, She wanted to represent the fatigue by laying down in the piece, and described her chronic pain as terrible aches in her joints. She said it felt like gravel grinding together. After years of attempted treatment she is finally doing well enough to go off to college. Bon Voyage Amelia!