When Life Hands You Lymes #66 & BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

I may or may not be extremely late with this post for a very special reason. You see, on Sunday I went and stayed in a hotel for three days where I read through the first 113,000 words of When Life Hands You Lymes (which took over eight hours) and typed fast and furiously which added another 30,000 words and wrote out a time line and pretty much immersed myself in the story. (Which is why I was so exhausted Wednesday night and posted the wrong post for the A to Z Challenge which I later deleted.) 
I wasn’t able to finish When Life Hands You Lymes during my three days away which was ok, my self-imposed deadline was April 17th. I’ll be posting more about my time next week, but I just wanted to give you that background before I announce that today I…
FINISHED MY BOOK! 
I’m so very thrilled to tell that to y’all. I’ve been working on this book every single day for the last 465 days and I was so ready to be done with the first draft. I’m going to take a six week break from the story before going back and working on the second draft and it feels like there’s such a huge world of possibilities staring me in the face regarding what writing project to tackle next. I’ve spent the last two months working mega hours on this book and WOOH! I’m so thrilled with what I’ve been able to do. 
And, in case y’all were wondering, the book is really long. 150,004 words to be exact. From what I can tell from Google, it’s probably about 600 pages. Which is something else we’ll be talking about in another post in the near future. 
Now, about the When Life Hands You Lymes story I’ve been posting on my blog each Friday. I’ve been praying and scrambling around inside my brain for the last month trying to figure out what to do because my book changed so drastically from what I had been planning that it doesn’t work to continue posting segments from what I’ve already written. 
That was upsetting to me because I have really had an amazing time sharing it with y’all and your encouragement really helped me keep going when times got hard. Therefore I’ve decided to keep sharing the story with you. Only, I’ll continue writing for the blog, keeping the original storyline. I guess we’ll see how that turns out. 🙂 
Today though, I’m going to be sharing a segment from the When Life Hands You Lymes edition that I just finished writing. I would be very, very delighted to hear y’alls thoughts on the matter because I’m really, really hoping this is an arrangement that will work well for all of us. 
And now, for the 66th segment of my fictional story, When Life Hands You Lymes: 

“There’s something fundamentally wrong when it’s no longer unusual to sleep the whole day away.” I stopped my rant to suck in some deep breaths since I was suddenly gasping for air. “I don’t even feel like a human any more. The world is flying past while I float away on a dream world that I can’t control.” 

“At least we know it’s just temporary, a corridor on our way to better things.” Dad stood next to my bed, his smile gentle. “Think of how long we begged for answers and now we have them.” 
“I never in my wildest dreams, and they can get pretty wild, imagined that the process of getting over Lyme disease would be so horrific.” I’m calming down now and rationale is taking over. 
“It’s difficult for us to see you feeling so miserable, too.” Dad rubbed the back of his neck. “But when I think of what this medicine is doing for you, it makes it all worth it.” 
“Dad?” 
“Yes, Madds?” 
“What do people who have Lyme disease and don’t have wonderful parents like you do?” I gave Dad a silly smile. 
“Does that mean you’re thankful for us?” 
“Hum, let’s think about that.” I scratch my head. “Number One: You pay for all of my medicine and doctor appointments. Number Two: You keep encouraging me and pulling me out of my pit of despair. Number Three: You love me even when I look like this.” I wave my hand to include my greasy hair, rumpled pajamas and thrashed bed. “Number Four: You take time out of your busy day to come up and check on me to see how I’m doing. Number Five: You keep giving me uplifting books, DVD’s and audio to fill my mind with.” I let out a deep sigh. “Yeah, I think I must be pretty thankful for you.” 
By the time Dad heads to get ready for bed a few minutes later I feel like I’ve made a definite improvement on my outlook on life. Sure it’s a pain sleeping the day away and having zero energy, but like Dad said, I am on the road to recovery. This is just a corridor, a long, pitch black, creepy and suffocating corridor, but it won’t last forever. 
Dr. Shay’s advice echoed in my mind. I needed to keep my mind on positive things. It was a battle I’d been fighting each day. Some times with success, other times with so much failure I wanted to scream. “Alright. Madalyn, you are going to rejoice.” I glanced at the clock. Other than trips to the bathroom I’d been in bed for twenty-four hours straight. Most of them had been spent sleeping. “One thing you’re thankful for for each hour I’ve been in bed.” Somehow talking out loud made the night seem more friendly. Julia was visiting her parents for a week in Florida and Darrick was gone on a business trip. By this time both my parents were probably sleeping. 

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