The mystery of chronic Lyme disease

I struggled to pull myself out of bed in the morning. I slept for hours at lunch breaks and was having a hard time focusing. I was working six days a week as an editor at one of the world’s largest newspapers. I needed to concentrate. It was my first year there on a fixed-term contract. I didn’t have the security of knowing I would be hired afterwards; I had limited scope to make mistakes. Articles that required extensive fact-checking, style correction and careful proofreading felt like an insurmountable obstacle. What was wrong with me?

I booked a doctor’s appointment to check my vitamin levels. I’m anaemic, so thought that could have been the cause. Perhaps it was simply lockdown fatigue – after all, lacking external stimuli and human connections and working from a laptop at home could well affect motivation. The doctor suggested I test for Lyme disease, just in case.