Animal lovers

Francis of Assisi
Johnny Appleseed`s friend
Charles Darwin
Deer tick
Borrelia Burgdorferi
Andrew Lyme

Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

After my life as a Cannabis plant, it was high time that I experience life as a man so I decided to be born as a boy. I ended up to be a traveling preacher who loved animals and became one of the most venerated religious figures in history. I became the patron saint of animals and the environment despite never being ordained to the Catholic priesthood. I founded the men's Order of "Lesser Brothers", the women’s Order of "St. Clare", and the Order of "Brothers and Sisters of Penance" for men and women who were unable to live the lives of traveling preachers.

My father was a prosperous silk merchant and had 11 children. I lived the high-spirited life of a wealthy young man, even fighting as a soldier for the town of Assisi in Italy. When I was 20, I joined a military expedition and was taken captive and spent a year in prison. When I was released, I returned to Assisi and resumed my carefree life. When I was 23, I got seriously ill and had a lot of hallucinations. One year later I enlisted in the army. While going off to war, I had a vision that directed me back to Assisi where I lost my taste for my worldly life.

One day as I was selling cloth and velvet in the marketplace for my father, a beggar came by and started bugging me to give him something, anything. I ignored him and continued with my selling. But then something inside me urged me to run after the poor guy. When I caught up to him, something inside me urged me to give him everything I had in my pockets. When my friends heard what I did, they thought I had gone crazy. When my father heard what I did, he exploded and was so angry that he even hit me.

On a pilgrimage to Rome, I joined the poor in begging at St. Peter's Basilica. The experience moved me to live in poverty. I spent much time in lonely places, asking god for enlightenment. I started to nurse the most repulsive lepers in the leper colonies near Assisi. After my pilgrimage to Rome I had a mystical vision of Jesus Christ in the country chapel just outside of Assisi, in which the Icon of Christ said to me "Francis, Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins." I thought he was talking about the ruined church in which I was praying at that moment. So I sold some cloth from my father's store and donated some money for some repairs to that church. There were many other church buildings needing repairs so I returned home and began preaching on the streets to collect money to repair those churches also. I soon amassed a lot more money than I had expected to and even got some followers to follow me.

My father was infuriated with my new behavior and attempted to get me back to my old ways, first with threats and then with beatings. I sued him for abuse. In the midst of legal proceedings before the Bishop of Assisi, I renounced my father and laid aside even the garments I had received from him in front of the public. For the next couple of months I lived as a beggar in the region of Assisi. Returning to the countryside around the town, I embraced the life of a penitent for 2 years repenting my sins and restoring several ruined chapels in the countryside around Assisi.

When I was 28, I heard a sermon that changed my life. The sermon was about Christ telling his followers to go forth, without money, walking stick or shoes and seek repentance. I was inspired to devote myself to a life of poverty. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and without staff or money, I began to preach repentance. I was soon joined by my first follower, a prominent fellow townsman who contributed all that he had to my work. Within a year I had 11 followers. I chose never to be ordained a priest. We lived a simple life in the deserted leper colony near Assisi; but we spent much of our time traveling through the mountainous districts, always cheerful and singing songs.

My preaching to ordinary people was unusual since I had no license to do so. I composed a simple rule for my followers. The rule was “To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps.” I went with my first 11 followers to Rome to seek permission from Pope Innocent III to found a new religious Order. Upon entry to Rome, we encountered Bishop Guido of Assisi, with Cardinal of Sabina, who was the confessor of Pope Innocent III. They were sympathetic and agreed to introduce me to the pope. After several days, the pope sent us a message saying that when god increased our group in grace and number, we could return for an official audience.

According to church tradition and practice, we had the tops of our heads shaved bald, leaving only a collar of hair around our bald spot. This was important because it recognized Church authority and lessened the chances of possible accusations of heresy, as had happened to the poor Waldensians whose leader Peter Waldo preached on the streets of Lyon, France 4 years before I was born. Their movement was a response to the schisms that had consumed the Catholic Church and it advocated a return to the vows of poverty and preaching of the Gospel as advocated by Jesus and myself. The movement was declared heretical and was persecuted by Church officials.

Pope Innocent initially had his doubts about my projects. In spite of or perhaps because of a dream he had of me holding up the cathedral of Rome, he decided to endorse my Order. This constituted the official founding of my Order that we modestly called the Order of "Lesser Brothers". We preached on the streets and had no possessions. Eventually we expanded throughout Italy. From then on, my new Order grew quickly.

One day, a rich noblewoman from Assisi called Clare heard me preaching. She became deeply touched by my message and she realized her calling. I received Clare and established the Order of "Poor Clares". A few of her rich companions followed and joined her. I gave them a dress, similar to my own. I housed them temporarily in a nearby monastery of Benedictine nuns. The Order of Saint Benedict was a Catholic religious order founded 700 years before I was born by a very rich man turned priest who gave up all of his wealth to live the life of a hermit. You could say he was my role model. His independent monastic communities observed his rule to pray and work; in that order. Within his order, each individual community of nuns and monks maintained their own autonomy.

For those who could not travel or leave their homes, I formed a third Order, the Order of "Brothers and Sisters of Penance". This was a fraternity composed of members who could not withdraw from the world or travel around. Before long my 3 Orders grew so much that we expanded to places outside out territory.

Determined to bring the Gospel to all god's creatures, I sought on several occasions to take my message out of Italy. When I was 31, I set out for Jerusalem, but I was shipwrecked by a storm and forced to return. A year later I sailed for Morocco, but this time an illness forced me to break off my journey in Spain. When I was 38, I went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Sultan to put an end to the conflict of the Crusades. My attempted rapprochement with the Muslim world had far-reaching consequences, long after my death. When the Crusades finally ended in defeat, it was the Franciscans who were allowed to stay on in the Holy Land and be recognized as "Custodians of the Holy Land" on behalf of the Catholic Church. By this point, my Orders had grown to such an extent that groups were sent to France, Germany, Hungary and Spain and to the East.

I believed that nature herself was the mirror of god. I called all creatures my “brothers” and “sisters,” and even preached to the animals. Once, a terrifying and ferocious wolf in our neighborhood started to devour animals as well as people. I had compassion upon the townsfolk, and so I went up into the hills to find the wolf. Fear of the animal had caused all my companions to flee, though I pressed on. When I found the wolf, I made the sign of the cross and commanded the wolf to come to me and hurt no one. Miraculously the wolf closed his jaws and lay down at my feet. I talked to the wolf. "Brother Wolf, you do much harm in these parts and you have done great evil. All these people accuse you and curse you...but Brother Wolf, I would like to make peace between you and the people." Then I led the wolf into the town, and surrounded by startled citizens, I made a pact between them and the wolf. Because the wolf had done evil out of hunger, the townsfolk were to feed the wolf regularly. In return, the wolf would no longer prey upon the folks or their flocks. In this manner the frightened townsfolk were freed from the menace of the predator. I even made a pact on behalf of the town dogs that they would not bother the wolf again. Finally, to show the townspeople that they would not be harmed, I blessed the wolf.

In my book “Praises of Creatures”, I mentioned the sun, the moon, the wind and the water, and called them all my "brothers" and "sisters". My deep sense of brotherhood under god embraced all of his creation. Many of the stories that surrounded my life dealt with my love for animals. Perhaps the most famous incident that illustrated my humility towards nature was recounted in the book "Little Flowers", a collection of legends and folklore that sprang up after my death. One legend described me traveling with some companions. We came upon a place in the road where birds filled the trees on either side. I told my companions to wait for me while I go to preach to my sisters, the birds. The birds surrounded me were intrigued by the power of my voice and not one of them flew away. I was often portrayed with a bird, typically in my hand.

I preached that the world was created good and beautiful by god but needed redemption because of the primordial sin of man. I preached to man and beast alike of the universal ability and duty of all creatures to praise god. I found this a common theme in the Psalms, the book of the Bible I particularly liked to read. I preached that it was the duty of men to protect and enjoy nature as both the stewards of god's creation and as creatures themselves.

When I was 34, I made a visit to Rome and met the Spanish priest Dominic de Guzman, the founder of an Order to preach the Gospel and to combat heresy. The order was famous for the infamous role it played in the inquisitions, and for its intellectual tradition. Soon after meeting Dominic, I miraculously got marks on my hands, wrists, and feet just like Jesus had from his crucifixion wounds. 2 years later I died. 2 years after I died, I was made a saint by Pope Gregory IX.

I had a great influence on many men long after I died.

300 years after I died, Ignatius of Loyola, a noble from Spain, was wounded in battle and he experienced a religious conversion. He and 6 other young men, including Francis Xavier, gathered and professed vows of poverty, chastity, and a special vow of obedience to the pope. His rule was "We must be altogether of the same mind and in conformity. If the Church shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black." He founded the Order of "Society of Jesus". Members called themselves Jesuits. It was a mixture of various Orders already existing. Just like my Order was inspired by the Benedictines, Ignatius's Order was inspired by mine. The "Jesuits" were like the "Benedictines" in that they professed poverty. They were like my "Franciscans" in that they were traveling preachers. They were like the "Dominicans" in that they professed education and loyalty to the pope. Because of Ignatius's military background and the members' willingness to travel anywhere in the world and to live in extreme conditions where required, his Order went to new lands where people needed to be converted to Christianity. The opening lines of his founding document declared that the Society of Jesus was founded for "whomever desires to serve as a soldier of God".

Over 700 years later, when scientists were starting to be worried about the fate of nature, Pope John Paul II declared that I be made the Patron of Ecology. He claimed that my love and care for creation was a challenge for Catholics and a reminder not to behave like dissident predators where nature was concerned, but to assume responsibility for it, taking all care so that everything stays healthy and integrated, so as to offer a welcoming and friendly environment to the generations who follow. The pope claimed that I offered Christians an example of genuine and deep respect for the integrity of creation... and that as a friend of the poor and as a man who was loved by the animals, I invited all of creation – animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon – to give honor and praise to the Lord. The pope continued to state that I was an example that when people are at peace with God, they are better able to devote themselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples. Pope John Paul II concluded his remarks with these words, "It is my hope that the inspiration of Saint Francis will help us to keep ever alive a sense of 'fraternity' with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created." One of the popes, after John Paul II died, named himself after me. Pope Franciscus, also known as Pope Francis!

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Johnny Appleseed`s friend (1774-1809)

I so very much enjoyed my last life as a man, that I chose my next life to be born a boy again. I ended up as John Chapman`s helping hand. John, better known as Johnny Appleseed was born the same day as I was. We were childhood friends and as adults, became best of friends. He was a pioneer and became famous for introducing apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, including the northern counties of West Virginia. He became an American legend while still alive due to his kind generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the many apple orchards he started. When he was 18, he persuaded me and his half-brother, who was only 11, to go west with him to plant apple trees from seeds.

Apple trees grown from seeds rarely produced sweet or tasty apples, even if the apples that the seeds came from were sweet and tasty. This was because the seeds from apples of the same tree were all different and grew very different apple trees. Each flower that eventually turned into a fruit was pollinated by different bees carrying different pollen from different trees. This made apple trees grown from apple seeds all very different from each other and usually sour and hard.

But the sour apples were still popular among the settlers because apples were mainly used for producing cider, the fermented apple juice, and applejack, the concentrated cider. Many settlers were required by law to plant orchards of apples and pears in order to uphold the right to the land they claimed. So Johnny Appleseed planted orchards from apple seeds for the settlers that pioneered new lands on the frontier. 

Like saint Francis of Assisi, Chapman was quick to preach the Gospel wherever he traveled and during his travels he converted many Indians whom he greatly admired. The Native Americans regarded him as someone who had been touched by the Great Spirit. Even hostile tribes left him alone. He once wrote, "I have traveled more than 4,000 miles about this country, and I have never met with one single rude or disrespectful Native American."

Johnny Appleseed cared very deeply about animals, including insects. One cool autumnal night, while lying by his camp-fire in the woods, he observed that the mosquitoes flew in the blaze and were burned to death. Johnny, who wore on his head a tin utensil which he used both as a cap and a cup, filled it with water and quenched the fire, and afterwards remarked, “God forbid that I should build a fire for my comfort that should be the means of destroying any of his creatures.” Another time he made a camp-fire in a snowstorm at the end of a hollow log in which he intended to pass the night. Finding it occupied by a bear and her cubs, he moved his fire to the other end, and slept on the snow in the open air, rather than disturb the bear family. Another time, he heard a horse was to be slaughtered. He bought the horse and a few grassy acres nearby and let the horse loose to recover. When it did, he gave the horse to someone needy, making him promise to treat the horse humanely.

The only way to perpetuate a variety of desirable apples is thru grafting. Grafting started with the Chinese in 3000 BC and over the 5000 years, about 7000 different varieties of desirable apple trees have been produced and protected against unauthorized copying. When apples from a particular tree turned out sweet and tasty or otherwise desirable, then the only way to grow apple trees that would grow more of that desired fruit was to graft a branch of that tree to another apple tree with healthy roots. You had to cut down the tree with the healthy roots until it was just a stump. Then you cut off a branch of the apple tree with the desirable apples and grafted it on to the stump. Then you waited a year till the stump with the grafted branch grew the desired fruit.

I died 35 years before Johnny when I was 35. I drank too much of his applejack one evening and as I was laughing, I choked to death on one of his hard apples.

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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Once again I chose my next life as a boy. I grew up to become a naturalist who had a great love for animals. I discovered the mechanism of evolution of life. I established that all species evolved from common ancestors. I proposed that evolution resulted from the "natural selection" of plants and animals for the "struggle to exist"; just like it resulted from man`s "artificial selection" of plants and animals for the "struggle to make a profit". I have been described as one of the most influential figures in human history. 

I was born in England to a wealthy society doctor and financier and had 5 siblings. When I was 8, my mother died and I started collecting rocks and bugs. I never stopped. One day when I was 22, I got a proposition for a position as a naturalist on a ship with Captain Robert FitzRoy who was commissioned for a 2 year voyage to chart the coastline of South America. It was a non-paying job and I had to pay my own expenses. My father objected to me going away, regarding it as a waste of time and money. I thought otherwise and accepted the job.

The 2 year voyage ended up lasting almost 5 years. I spent most of my time on land investigating the geology and collecting samples for further study, while FitzRoy surveyed and charted the coast. I kept careful notes of my observations and theoretical speculations and at intervals during the voyage, my specimens were sent back to Cambridge University in England. I had some expertise in geology, beetle collecting and dissecting marine invertebrates, but in all other areas I was a novice. Despite suffering badly from seasickness, I wrote copious notes while on board the ship. Most of my zoology notes were about marine invertebrates. On our first stop ashore, I found that a white band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given me the first volume of Lyell's "Principles of Geology" which proposed a concept that land slowly rose and sunk over immense periods. His concepts made sense to me. When we reached Brazil, I was delighted by the tropical forest, but detested the sight of slavery. We continued to the south in Patagonia and stopped at Bahía Blanca. At the cliffs near Punta Alta I made a major find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe.

On rides with gauchos into the interior to explore geology and collect more fossils, I gained social, political and anthropological insights into both the natives and the colonials. Three Fuegians on board who had been seized during FitzRoy`s first voyage and had spent a year in England, were taken back to Tierra del Fuego as missionaries to build a church. I found them friendly and civilized, yet their relatives seemed "miserable, degraded savages, as different as the difference between wild and domesticated animals." To me the difference showed cultural advances, not racial inferiority. Unlike my scientist friends, I then thought there was a bridgeable gap between humans and animals. A year later, the church had been abandoned. The Fuegians reverted to live like the other natives and had no wish to return to England. 

I experienced an earthquake in Chile and saw signs that the land had just been raised, including mussel-beds stranded above high tide. High in the Andes I saw seashells and several fossilized palm trees. On the Galápagos Islands I found mockingbirds allied to those in Chile but differing from island to island. Also slight variations in the shape of tortoise shells showed which island they came from. We sailed on to Australia where the marsupial rat-kangaroo and the platypus seemed so unusual that I thought it was almost as though two distinct Creators had been at work. When we returned to England 5 years later, having circumnavigated the earth, I had become a celebrity in scientific circles.

The strain of fame took a toll and I got sick with stomach problems, headaches and heart symptoms. For the rest of my life, I was repeatedly incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, palpitations, trembling and other symptoms, particularly during times of stress such as attending meetings or making social visits. To marry or not to marry my cousin Emma was the most difficult question I faced. Advantages included "constant companion and a friend in old age ... better than a dog anyhow", against points such as "less money for books" and "terrible loss of time." Having decided in favor of marrying, I discussed it with my father, then went to visit her. But I never got around to proposing marriage because I got distracted by talking about my ideas on "transmutation". I began to see a similarity between farmers picking the best stock in selective breeding and nature selecting from chance variants so that every part of newly acquired structure is fully practical and perfected. I eventually proposed to Emma, but not before telling her my new ideas and theories. She accepted my proposal. We found a suitable place in London and we moved in along with my "museum". By the time I was 30, I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

I did much research and experimented by selective breeding plants and animals. I found evidence that species were not fixed. I investigated many detailed ideas to refine and substantiate my theory. For 15 years this work was in the background to my main occupation of writing on geology and publishing expert reports on the collections from my 5 year voyage around the world. Then I started to write my first "pencil sketch" of my theory of natural selection. 18 years of work on barnacles showed me that slightly changed body parts served different functions to meet new conditions.

At age 47, I was investigating whether eggs and seeds could survive travel across seawater to spread species across oceans. As I was writing up my theory, Alfred Russel Wallace sent me an essay which described the same ideas that I had. We immediate submitted a joint publication of both of our theories. When I published my theory in my book "On the Origin of Species", many people proposed the same theory, but I was the only one who had the best compelling evidence for it. My scientific discovery formed the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life. My "On the Origin of Species" proved unexpectedly popular, with the entire stock of 1,250 copies oversubscribed when it went on sale to booksellers. In the book, I set out one long argument of detailed observations, inferences and consideration of anticipated objections. My only allusion to human evolution was the understatement that "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history". 

My theory was simply stated in the introduction: "As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form."  I put a strong case for common descent, but avoided the then controversial term "evolution". 

At the end of the book I concluded that:"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

The book aroused international interest. Though my illness kept me away from the public debates, I eagerly scrutinized the scientific response, commenting on press cuttings, reviews, articles, satires and caricatures, and corresponded with colleagues worldwide. I had only said "Light will be thrown on the origin of man", but the first review claimed I made a doctrine of the "men from monkeys" idea. By the end of the decade most scientists agreed that evolution occurred, but only a minority supported my view that the chief mechanism was natural selection.

"Origin of Species" was translated into many languages, becoming a staple scientific text attracting thoughtful attention from all walks of life, including the "working man". My theory also resonated with various movements at the time and became a key fixture of popular culture. At age 51, I became ill and grew a beard. Caricatures of me as an ape helped to identify all forms of evolution with my name.

Despite repeated bouts of illness during the last 22 years of my life, my work continued. "Fertilization of Orchids" gave my first detailed demonstration of the power of natural selection to explain complex ecological relationships, making testable predictions. I showed that wild orchids adapted their flowers to attract specific moths to each species and ensure cross fertilization. As my health declined, I lay on my sickbed in a room filled with inventive experiments to trace the movements of climbing plants. "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" was the first part of my planned "big book", and included my unsuccessful hypothesis attempting to explain heredity. It sold briskly at first, despite its size, and was translated into many languages. I wrote most of a second part, on natural selection, but it remained unpublished in my lifetime.

In my final book, I examined earthworms and their effect on soil. "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures".

When I was 73 years old, I was diagnosed with coronary thrombosis and disease of the heart most probably from a tick bite. Soon after I died and was buried to be eaten by the worms I considered so worthy.

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Deer tick

I was born a female tick and had a 2 year life cycle during which time I pass through 3 stages: a larva which was only 0.5mm long, a nymph which was 3 times longer and an adult which was about 3mm long. I was a 3-host tick; the larva, nymph and adult stages each fed on separate hosts. Early spring my mom latched on to a deer and drank herself full of his blood. She dropped off and laid 2000 eggs on the forest floor. The larval eggs hatched into tiny 6-legged larvae. One of them was me. By middle of summer my brothers and sisters and I found mice to attach to and fed on their blood for 4 days. We fed until we were so full that we dropped off falling to the forest floor. We hibernated over the winter and next spring, we molted into nymphs. As nymphs we had the time of our lives. We attached ourselves to animals and fed sucking blood for 4 days. We drank till we were so full that we dropped off falling to the forest floor where we molted into adults. As adults we fed the entire season, even in winter when the ground and ambient temperatures were above freezing. We didn't go looking for mice any more. Oh no, we were too big for that. We chose deer. After all, we were known as deer ticks. Deer was our favorite host, but we never refused a human whenever we could find some flesh under their clothing.

We didn't just eat. We had sex. It was wonderful. Unlike the other type of ticks who only copulated during feeding, we copulated before and during our blood meal. For luck I was born a female and was able to store sperm. The mouth-parts of my male mates were poorly suited for attaching to hosts and feeding. But that was good news for me and the ladies because that made the hungry boys that much better suited for mating. My male mates touched my genital with their mouth-parts, then, they inserted their mouth-parts in my vagina. When the sacs on their penises were full of their sperm, they withdrew their mouth-parts and grasped their inflated sperm sac and tucked them into my waiting vagina. Even though their sperm entered in less than a minute, we usually remain coupled for days. During their close coupling, they drained me of my juices, receiving their first nourishing meal in a long time. No wonder they clung on so long. 

About one in a thousand of us deer ticks had Borrelia Burgdorferi bacteria living in us without us ever knowing it.

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Borrelia Burgdorferi

In my next life, I was a Borrelia Burgdorferi bacteria. We were one of the smallest bacteria that ever lived. We quietly lived in many different creatures without bothering our hosts at all. There was one exception however; man. Man hated us and reacted very harshly whenever we ended up inside him. Usually that happened whenever he was bitten by the deer tick, one of our favorite hosts. Because of my small size, I lay hidden and undiscovered for a long time despite the very harsh symptoms I caused whenever I infected a human and gave them a disease called Lyme disease. I was carried by a tick called the deer tick. I was named after the Swiss researcher Willy Burgdorfer, who first isolated us. We were the third microbial genome ever to have been sequenced. I have 910,725 base pairs and 853 genes.

Lyme disease symptoms include the characteristic bull's eye rash as well as many very severe illnesses. The incubation period from infection to the onset of symptoms is usually 1-2 weeks, but can be as short as a few days, or as long as a few years.
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Andrew Lyme (1949-2020)

I was born healthy and was never sick all my life. I lived in Bern, Switzerland. When I was 40 years old, one late summer, a few days after a bicycle trip I made with the kids, one of them noticed I had a "boo-boo" on my leg. It was a 10cm perfectly round red rash that felt like an insect bite. In a week it disappeared and my hip nerves started to ache. I took painkillers, every day more and more, all kinds of homeopathy pills, and even tried acupuncture. In 2 weeks the pain suddenly disappeared. The kids just came back from a week at camp and we decided to go for our annual trip to Italy before they closed our hotel for the season.

Then the pain started again. The seawater did some good. The three big boys were out swimming every day. We had a great time. I was just worrying about how I was going to drive home with the pain that was getting worst daily. When we arrived back home, the pain was unbearable. The painkillers didn't work anymore. And neither could I.

The pain in my upper legs and hips was at times so severe that only by moving and stretching them could I get relief. And I found I could not sleep because I needed to move and stretch constantly. The pain became so unbearable that I would drive to the emergency in the middle of the night to be injected with pain killers. I kept repeating in vain my story of the plate size red spot that I had for a week a few weeks after taking a biking trip along the local river. Later I found out that the doctors diagnosed my pain as psychosomatic.

I saw an acupuncturist and he sent me to the neurological clinic for a spinal fluid examinations confirming Lyme disease. I was confined in the hospital for a month and had to stay home for 3 months. During my month long stay at the hospital, I visited the hospital library and found public health alerts to the high-risk areas in Europe concerning this tick carrying decease. I was surprised that the local river around Bern, just where I was with my children, was on the top of the list of danger areas for the Lyme bacteria which was so very small and could hide and hibernate, making it very difficult to find. The telltale symptom of the raised red round spot that I had repeatedly described in the brochure as clear indication of being infected by the Lyme bacteria. After a week of concentrated antibiotic infusion, and an electric heating pad, the pain subsided. I was able to sleep again. Then came the second nightmare.

Day by day I was gradually losing the strength in my two legs. I didn't know for how long it would continue. Eventually I couldn't even lift my legs and could hardly walk. I had to drag myself up the stairs. And just as it was reaching a point where I couldn't climb the stairs any more, the pain stopped. The strength slowly returned and in less than a year the entire thing was like a bad nightmare.

It could have been worst. After several months, untreated or inadequately treated patients may go on to develop severe and chronic symptoms that affect many parts of the body, including the brain, nerves, eyes, joints and heart. Many disabling symptoms can occur in extreme cases including permanent impairment in motor or sensory function of the lower extremities.
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Continued in "A few short lives of Joe Ova"
https://andrewvecseyfileslivesofjoeova.blogspot.com/2020/02/chapter-1.html

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