Overcoming adversity is one thing. Overcoming adversity and using it to help others is quite another. 
 
Sondra Parys has dealt with plenty of health-related adversity over the past decade, but she is maintaining overall wellness and using her experience to help student-athletes in her role as assistant coach of the Loyola University Chicago women's volleyball team. 
 
Ten years ago, as a volleyball player for the University of Toledo, Parys contracted Lyme disease, a bacterial disease spread by ticks. 
 
It took time for doctors to correctly diagnose the ailment, causing much frustration for Parys. 

Today she describes herself as "healed or healing." Instead of dwelling on the pain and confusion Lyme disease brought to her life, Parys says the ongoing battle has positively impacted how she coaches and even why she coaches. 
 
The beneficiaries of that are the student-athletes in Loyola's volleyball program.
 
"My playing experience, I loved it," she said. "Don't get me wrong, but if I pictured what I wanted it to be and how it was, it wasn't the same thing. You can't go back and redo it. But I think a huge reason why I wanted to be a coach is because I want to be able to give those athletes more than I was ever able to experience.
 
"I also know what it's like to go through the highs and lows of being a college athlete, not even just with the illness, but with everything. I really feel like I can be a kind of support system for them and ultimately just give them a really joyful experience. If winning is a part of that, obviously that's what we like to do at Loyola. But for me it's a bigger thing. It's about building relationships with them and making sure they can get through everything they're going to go through in the next four years."
 
The great unknown
 
The most baffling and frustrating part of contracting Lyme disease for Parys was not knowing what she had. She knew only that she wasn't feeling like herself in the summer of 2010 after her freshman year at Toledo. 
 
Lyme disease attacks the nervous system, joints, skin and heart. It can be accompanied by a rash and cause one to suffer from headaches, fever and fatigue. 
 
"I think that's one of the hardest questions to answer because I don't know how I contracted it, and I don't know exactly when," she said. "I think that's pretty common with Lyme disease. Lyme disease can go untreated, and mine did. Luckily, I don't think mine went untreated for very long. But it was still a couple months.
 
"I don't know when exactly, but I want to guess it was around the summer of 2010, right before I went back for my preseason, right around the end of July of 2010. So, I guess I'm hitting my 10-year anniversary of when I started experiencing the symptoms. But I never saw a rash. I never noticed a tick bite or anything like that. So yeah, kind of a crazy thing that happened.
 
"My freshman year, I had kind of a normal year, a really successful season at Toledo. That summer, I came home to Crystal Lake, Illinois, and started to feel sick sometime in July."
 
Then came the frustrating part. Parys recalls going undiagnosed for 6-8 weeks. She reported to Toledo in August of 2010 and was not cleared to practice by the team doctor because of constant head and neck pain. 
 
"I think I was confused because we went all over the place, and I wasn't getting an answer," she said. "They essentially told me it was a viral meningitis. That is kind of what they decided it was going to be when nothing else was coming back positive. In Toledo and the doctors here, they were trying to figure it out. They said it sounded like a viral meningitis, and that's a scary thing because you can't really cure a virus. You just have to wait it out.
 
"And then we got a call from the doctor saying, 'Nope, we actually got a test result back, and it was Lyme disease.' When that happened, I was like, 'What in the heck is Lyme disease?' I think it's becoming a little more known. Some celebrities and athletes are talking about it now. But at the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into."
 
That brought on a series of ups and downs. Parys was treated with antibiotics but said that at the time, she was unaware that "chronic" Lyme could persist because of the length it took to get proper medication and that she would need further treatment. She was on and off strong antibiotics while trying to play volleyball during her sophomore season. 
 
"I didn't fully understand what I needed to do to keep myself healthy and understand even how to communicate that with my coaches," she said. "They were obviously supportive. But I think if I could go back and maybe do some things differently, I just wish I would have been more educated and mature to be able to take my health a little bit more seriously and work collaboratively, especially as a coach now. I didn't really know how to work through those things. I was just being a 19-year-old kid. It was just kind of a day-to-day thing."
 
In addition to the physical effects of the disease, Parys had to deal with the mental and emotional strain. Volleyball players are fierce competitors on the court, and Parys couldn't give it her all on some days. 
 
"Some days I felt great and then some days I didn't," she said. "That was the emotional, mental battle I struggled with. I had a career high one match that year. And I can go back to a match I don't even remember playing in because I was so symptomatic. I think that was probably the hardest part, just the ups and down of not feeling I could control my performance as much.
"And then the mental part of it started to come into play, too. That definitely didn't help either with playing consistently, which is what the coaches obviously are looking for. They're looking for a consistent player. And I just felt I couldn't give that to them."
 
A greater understanding of Lyme disease enabled Parys to have stronger junior and senior seasons, but she still suffered from constant fatigue, migraines, joint pain in her knees, a rapid heart rate and what she described as "mental fog."
 
"I think the fact that it goes untreated often is probably one of the most common things," she said. "It is a bacterial infection, and it is type of infection that you can get antibiotics for, and antibiotics are going to help That being said, I needed stronger antibiotics earlier. And I think that is something I wish I would have maybe known. Just having the right kind of education on what treatment is best for you and that every person is different with Lyme disease. I think that is really the hardest part about it."
 
Looking only forward
 
Today, Parys said she is feeling better and trying to get on as if she no longer has Lyme disease. That's despite a setback she had last February that ended up putting her in the hospital for one night. 
 
"I've been feeling pretty well," she said. "I've been at home with my family, which has been really helpful. I'm in a good environment to be able to take care of myself and focus on good health and rest and nutrition. 
 
"Most of my treatment is self-driven so it's good rest and nutrition and exercise. I do have a Lyme specialist in Chicago that I started seeing last year again when I got sick. I think it was just a combination of the flu season and the cold (weather). I was just really, really sick for about 6-8 weeks, but I haven't really had to see him for the last 6-8 months or so. I've been relatively healthy, just kind of the normal holistic approach, which has been working for me."
 
The one curveball thrown at Parys was the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
"I try to not feed my mind with information that's maybe not going to help," she said. "But it definitely opened my eyes maybe a little bit more to, 'Hey, I am maybe a little bit more compromised.' I don't know how I would recover if I got COVID. I don't doubt that I would be fine. I'm young. I'm still very active and healthy, but it did put a little bit of fear, and it does a little bit when I go out, even to the grocery store and things like that. I'm trying to find a balance of not living in fear but also being smart. I think that's the biggest challenge with COVID right now."
 
Parys added that it can only help public awareness of Lyme disease that WNBA star Elena Delle Donne has gone public with her own battle with the ailment. 

"I was really intrigued," she said. "I saw that she was taking 64 supplements a day or something like that. I definitely take my 10 supplements but to see that she is taking 60 and still experiencing some really tough symptoms it was awesome to read that she is still trying to play. I couldn't imagine trying to play still, to be honest. I don't know if my body could have handled that.
 
"It's really cool to see that she is doing that. Justin Bieber has Lyme disease. He came out with that in the last year or two. For people to see that Lyme Disease is something that is affecting people long term is something I think can only help just get the education."
 
Parys says she eagerly awaits getting back to assisting women's head coach Amanda Berkley in getting a young Ramblers squad ready for a new season on the volleyball court. 
 
She also is counting her blessings, knowing that her health is going in the right direction. 
 
"I've definitely been feeling antsy lately to just get up and have more of that purpose again," she said. "I definitely miss coaching and just seeing everybody else on campus. It's weird to think about how long it's been that we've been doing the same thing. It's been months.
 
"I've noticed that good health, rest and nutrition and the mindset of living normally has really helped me recover. I would like to say that my case is probably one of the rare ones where I'm just very blessed to be as healthy as I am and to live a normal life."
 

Bruce Miles is a 1979 graduate of the Loyola University Chicago College of Arts and Sciences. He worked for the Daily Herald in Arlington, Heights, Illinois, from 1988-2019. He served as the Herald's beat writer covering the Chicago Cubs from 1998-2019.