I’d just gotten engaged at Christmas, and I was starting the second year of treatment for third-stage Lyme disease.
The treatment (IV antibiotic several times a day) was brutal, but the neurological Lyme disease was worse. I’d begun having tics, twitches, and seizures that terrified my friends and family. After a solid year of treatment, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, but I wanted my life back. I wanted the wedding my family was throwing for me and my fiance in October.
Instead, I got what seemed like impossible news. I was pregnant. I’d had an IUD inserted 6 months earlier to prevent pregnancy, because I’d been advised that IUDs were safe and more effective than condoms. I couldn’t take birth control due to all the antibiotics I needed to fight the Lyme disease. Yet somehow, despite the IUD and all the drugs, I was pregnant. Several doctor’s appointments followed, but the final recommendation was unanimous: the only way I could stay pregnant was if I ceased all treatment. If I ceased treatment, I could end up with lifelong neurological impairments. If I tried to carry a pregnancy with Lyme disease, there was a terrible possibility that the child would be infected in utero.
My abortion probably saved my life, and I’m grateful every day for that.
I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I had been fighting so hard to beat the bacteria. My husband-to-be and both of my parents went with me to the termination appointment. The anesthesia made me sick. I threw up over and over on the way home. Even still, I’m so grateful to those healthcare professionals who took care of me that day. I spent three full years battling Lyme disease and the co-infections that accompany it, and was hospitalized multiple times. But I survived. I got married. I have a beautiful son.
My abortion probably saved my life, and I’m grateful every day for that.