Echoes by Dana

Unchained. Unmasked. Unfiltered. Unapologetically me.

Author: Echoes by Dana

  • The Invisible Battle

    I’m lying on the couch, contemplating how often we take our health for granted.

    Sometimes I mourn the girl I was before this, before I found out Lyme was the reason I’m not myself, why I’ve been constantly exhausted and experiencing weird symptoms for the past three years.

    It’s evening. I am one with the couch, my legs feeling like stones, heavy and detached from my body. I’m thirsty, but too tired to walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

    The only thing that motivates me is the “poison” I need to take in five minutes: the antibiotics that have filled my belly twice a day for the last four months, aimed at fighting this “sentence.” So I start moving to the edge of the couch, telling myself, “You can do it.” And I do. I’m proud of myself that I also managed to brush my teeth to get ready for bed, as I can feel my energy “left the building” an hour ago, and I’m literally running on fumes.

    Someone once told me Lyme is a marathon, the path to recovery is long and painful. Now I get it: slow progress in symptoms disappearing despite taking antibiotics for the last four months, not knowing how tomorrow will be (good or bad), symptoms reappearing, and feeling like you’re starting from scratch every time you change something in the treatment.

    Sometimes I wonder if all this will go away, if I will be the fortunate one to say I beat it, or the less fortunate who will struggle with this until they are “done and dusted.”

    I guess I’ll see. I’m curious how next month’s travel of 600 km to see the Lyme specialist will go. Will she say I need to take the “poison” for one more month, or will the symptoms go away? I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, I will enjoy the sun, the sausage dog in my lap, and maybe a good sauna break this weekend.

  • The Day My Salt Peeling Got Stolen at the Sauna

    For the past few months, I’ve started a new ritual: detoxing in the sauna. I’m battling Lyme disease, and the antibiotic treatment is anything but a spa-like experience for my body. Still, life has a strange way of sprinkling small, absurd moments even into the hardest chapters.

    This is the story of going to a sauna with a brand-new salt peeling oil, and leaving without it. Not because I used it, but because it disappeared.

    It was a glorious bank holiday in June, far too beautiful to spend curled up on the couch. So off to the sauna I went. The day before, I’d stopped by DM and picked up a new salt peeling oil. It smelled like a tropical escape in a jar, the kind of scent that makes you believe, even for a second, that healing is simple.

    For this detox session, I chose a new sauna, curious, hopeful, ready for something different. The place was big, maybe a little too big, and slightly outdated, but I told myself it didn’t matter. Heat is heat. Steam is steam. Healing is healing… or so I wanted to believe.

    I placed my precious little jar by the showers and slipped into the steam room, imagining how soft my skin would feel afterward. Ten quiet minutes. Just breathing. Just sweating. Just trying to feel normal again.

    When I came back, it was gone.

    My heart sank — deeper than I expected. It wasn’t really about the money or the product. It was the feeling that something small, something comforting, had been taken away at a time when I was already fighting so hard to rebuild myself. I stood there in my towel, scanning faces, wondering who needed it more than I did.

    I left soon after, peeling-less and oddly heavy inside. On the way out, I tried to laugh it off, imagining the mysterious thief glowing in tropical bliss somewhere in the steam. But beneath the humor, there was a quiet sadness, the kind that comes when you realize how fragile your little rituals are, how even small disappointments feel bigger when your body is tired from healing.

    Maybe the jar wasn’t the real loss. Maybe it was the illusion that this new place would hold the same sense of safety I’ve been trying so hard to rebuild lately.

    And yet, as I stepped outside, the summer air wrapped around me gently. I reminded myself that healing isn’t always soft or fair. Sometimes it looks like leaving early, empty-handed, carrying nothing but a story , and a reminder to hold your small comforts a little closer.

    So yes, in the world of saunas, maybe you shouldn’t trust anyone with your scented goods. But maybe the real lesson is this: even when something is taken from you, your ritual, your resilience, and your sense of humor remain untouched.

    And next time? I’ll bring a smaller jar… and a slightly tougher heart.