07/24/2026
“In 2014, at the age of 29, I started getting sick. I was experiencing full body pain, debilitating fatigue, weakness, hot flashes, night terrors, migraines, and depression, and at one point I lost my vision. My Dad, who was a practicing physician at the time, was an incredible diagnostician, and even he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I was frequently dismissed, laughed at, and gaslit by doctors who were convinced that it was all in my head or that I was making it up.
I got so sick that I couldn’t take care of myself anymore. I had to give up my career, my dream apartment, my independence, and I moved in with my parents. I was 30 years old. At my worst, I had trouble speaking, walking, and I couldn’t make decisions. Being really sick and being told over and over that, “You’re over-exaggerating”, “You’re being overly sensitive, Shira”, or “Look, your labs are normal", is a special kind of torture that most people will never understand. I attempted su***de multiple times. Dying seemed to be the only way to get relief.
It would take three years, and a chance meeting that my Dad had with a Lyme literate practitioner at a medical conference, to finally get diagnosed. I never had a rash. I never saw a tick. My ELISA test was negative. After I started treatment, my brain cleared enough for me to read and speak again. I decided to create Lemon or Lyme to educate the public and to make others like me feel less alone.” – Shira, Still Sick, But Still Fighting
