Madison Wooldridge

Living With Lyme

During her freshman year, senior Madison Wooldridge was taking eight different types of medications for one medical issue- chronic lyme disease. Diagnosed with lyme her freshman year, Wooldridge’s doctors found that she had it for multiple years without knowing.

“Lyme can flare up and make you really sick, which is what happened to me my freshman and junior year,” Wooldridge said.

Because it wasn’t caught by her doctors early on, treatment became more vigorous.

“I’ve gone through many treatments, but not all of them have worked,” Wooldridge said.

Wooldridge has symptoms including fatigue, tiredness, and constant pains, migraines and possible juvenile arthritis.

“I went to school around two to three times a week my freshman and junior year because I was so sick. It’s already a struggle to get out of bed some days, and being so behind in school made it worse,” Wooldridge said.

Wooldridge has cheered all four years of high school, and is on varsity. “Anytime I get hit, the pain is a lot worse than a normal person would have since my nervous system is affected from lyme. I really have to push myself, because I don’t want lyme to stop me from doing something I love,” Wooldridge said.

Memory loss has also been a problem for Wooldridge.

“Lyme has caused a lot of memory loss for me, and it’s really affected me because I love to play piano and guitar, but I struggle to remember any song that I’ve learned.” Wooldridge said. “Memory loss has been one of the things that has affected me the most, I feel like my disease is taking away something close to me.”