If your family doesn't believe you're sick ....

[JackieCalifornia]

Try the film 'Under Our Skin', a documentary about Lyme sufferers.

It's available free online to watch.  

Search for:             under our skin watch online

[JackieCalifornia]

Good for you, wonko, and thank you for posting this.  

Are you still in treatment, or is that a sore subject?

[wonko]

Not being validated by friends and family is such a devastating part of this disease, or it least it was for me!  I got sick in my late 20's and many of my peers (in the same profession, of similar age) had zero compassion or understanding.  I took a lot of comfort in reading things like the "Spoon Theory," but could not get them to entertain doing so.  I'm largely estranged from my family, but when I did try to tell them about this it fell on mostly deaf ears.  As if getting sick wasn't alienating enough!

In the end, my own acceptance turned out to be the most important to me, and the hardest to get!  I still beat myself up for not being able to work the way that my healthy counterparts do.  The upswing is that I've learned to be more efficient, since I know I need to capitalize on my good days to compensate for my bad days.  It is also the case that the success that I do enjoy means all the more to me, since I know what I struggled through to get it, even if no one else understands.

And while I still have my bad days, including yesterday which I spent all day at home, bed ridden with fatigue and dull pains, I seem to be holding my own at my job.  Maybe I'm not where I would otherwise be, but I'm grateful and sometimes even proud to have kept my career despite this blasted disease.
  

[JackieCalifornia]

None of my business, but if you asked him as a favor to watch it with you, that you would like his opinion, maybe that would relax him a bit.  It doesn't mean he would agree with you afterward, but it will give him food for thought even if he never mentions it again.  

I'm sure he's worried about you and is doing all he can to help, in his view.  There is much confusion about Lyme disease, and that confusion naturally causes people to get their backs up about it.  

(Not saying this is true of your father, but my own father was one cranky, opinionated s. o. b. who meant well, but often didn't achieve it.  Just sayin'.)  

[Trying1989]

I told my dad to watch this about a year ago, but he won't. Thank you for your suggestion, though. :)

[cave76]

Something else to give them to read---- if they 'know' you're sick, in some way they don't fully understand, but still don't 'get it':

The Spoon Theory
http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/wpress/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

(Sad but true---- "You can't get it, until you get it.")