Amy tan lyme disease biography examples

With a partner, she started a business writing firm, providing speeches for the salesmen and executives of large corporations. After a dispute with her partner, who believed she should give up writing to concentrate on the management side of the business, she became a full-time freelance writer. Amy Tan prospered as a business writer. After a few years in business for herself, she had saved enough money to buy a house for her mother.

She and her husband lived well on their double income, but the harder Tan worked at her business, the more dissatisfied she became. The work had become a compulsive habit, and she sought relief in creative efforts.

Amy tan lyme disease biography examples

Amy Tan has been awarded on several occasions for her books, fiction etc. They live in San Francisco, California. This is because she feels she might pass on mental issues to them, something that both her mother and grandmother have suffered from. She also has suffered from depression. Daisy attempted suicide but failed and then in , she died.

Young Amy was deeply unhappy with her Asian appearance and heritage. She was the only Chinese girl in class from the third grade until she graduated from high school. She remembers trying to belong and feeling frustrated and isolated. In fact, she was so determined to look like an American girl that she even slept with a clothespin on her nose, hoping to slim its Asian shape.

By the time Amy was a teenager, she had rejected everything Chinese. This would continue to affect her for many years that followed. Following the murder of a roommate in , Amy left a linguistics doctoral program at UC Berkeley and was inspired by his intended career to work in the field of disabilities. She became a Language Development Specialist for programs serving children with developmental disabilities, and later, she became the Director of a demonstration project on mainstreaming multicultural children with disabilities into the public school system.

For Amy Tan, she is probably the most popular when it comes to mother-daughter relationships. Planning a trip to Paris? And I was nearly apathetic about all that was happening. Let me add here that my doctors were affiliated with major urban hospitals, were tops in their department, well-known, well respected. I liked them. I still do.

Not once did they raise the idea that I was a hypochondriac. But they also did not raise the possibility of Lyme disease. While being worked up to rule out M. I looked that up on the internet. Upon reading further, I saw all my symptoms. Lyme, I learned, was a multi-systemic disease, an umbrella under which many symptoms could be found.

I said that the test was not always accurate and that all my symptoms were consistent with Lyme. He said it was impossible I had Lyme. It was rare and not in California. He insisted it was not Lyme, that it was too rare, and that he had not tested me for Lyme, but for syphilis. I was stunned. He thought it was more likely I had syphilis?

I went sleuthing for a Lyme specialist and found one in San Francisco, who was also doing research on Lyme disease. What luck! This doctor considered the history of my rash, the summertime flu, the migrating aches and neuropathy, the insomnia and fatigue. He thought what had now grown to 16 lesions in my brain were significant in light of my neurological symptoms.

Those lesions could be related to neuroborreliosis, that is, spirochetes in the brain. He saw on previous tests that I had some interesting changes in my immune system, and then he ordered a complete battery of tests from IGeneX, a lab specializing in tick-borne illnesses, to check for not only Lyme disease, but its common co-infections.

I did not have any co-infections, like babesiosis or erlichiosis, which would have made treatment more difficult. I wanted to celebrate. I knew at last what was wrong with me. Now I could begin fighting the right enemy. Let me hasten to add that not all Lyme patients test positive on the Western Blot. I was later part of a small study in which my blood was drawn and sent to five labs throughout the country, including those at prestigious institutions.

A day after starting antibiotic treatment, I became feverish and ill with the classic Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction, a second confirmation of the disease. It is a immune response experienced by patients with a spirochetal disease to antibiotics. A month later, the joint and muscle pain eased up somewhat. Two months, and some of the fog finally lifted, and I frantically wrote for long days, fearful that the curtain would come down again.

After six months, I had no muscle stiffness or joint pain remaining. I could make my bed without feeling exhausted. Improvements came in increments. I celebrated each one. They were like gifts. But if I overdid it, if I did too much in one day, I paid the price by becoming ill—fluish and exhausted—for two or three days. The hallucinations and vacant staring turned out to be simple and complex partial seizures in my temporal lobe.

I started taking anti-seizure meds, which also took away the pain that accompanied my neuropathy. Those two conditions will remain with me for life. The one type of seizure I cannot control with medication are reflex seizures, which occur with repeating black and white patterns—like those dotted lines on the freeway. I never liked to drive anyway.

My husband is my willing chauffeur. I took antibiotics for seven years. Amy Tan is best known for her novels and children's books, but she has also written several short stories, published both formally and informally. Her most popular short story is "Fish Cheeks" , which is a true story published in The story Published in by Random House, Inc.

Just two years before the book's release, Tan was succeeding as a speech writer and self-proclaimed workaholic. Feeling unfulfilled, she found her calling in fiction writing. The storylines all touch on the delicate and fragile intertwinedness of her Asian and American cultures. Tan initially got involved with authorship because she wanted to share her life experiences.

Growing up, Amy Tan had a tedious and complex relationship with her mother. They often quarreled when she was a child, but Tan allowed their relationship to mend as she got older. She made this decision after her mother suffered from an illness, in which Tan traveled with her to her home country of China, after she recuperated. Her other books have similar themes, as they all incorporate Asian characters and customs.