Real Housewives’ Yolanda Foster: I’ve Lost the Ability to Read and Write

Most days, Yolanda Foster says she feels like someone “tied my hands behind my back, “just so she can watch “life go by without me.”

The 51-year-old star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills – who was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2012 – wrote in a candid and heartfelt blog post that her illness has left her feeling like “someone came in and confiscated my brain.”

“I have lost the ability to read, write, or even watch TV, because I can’t process information or any stimulation for that matter,” Foster wrote. “It feels like someone came in and confiscated my brain and tied my hands behind my back to just watch and see life go by without me participating in it.”

Foster began the blog by apologizing to fans for not writing earlier because “unfortunately I have lost the ability to do so in an intelligent matter at this time.”

“Most of you know I have been battling Lyme disease for the past three years,” she wrote. “I wasted the first year trying to get diagnosed and spent the next two trying to find a cure. I have gone from the conventional long-term antibiotics to about every holistic protocol there is to offer. Unfortunately, I was only able to get to about a 60% recovery until I relapsed in early December and have not been able to find my way back.”

Other than passing references to her illness, Foster’s ongoing battle with the Lyme disease has largely been avoided in the current season of Real Housewives.

“The most frustrating thing is that there is medical data on Lyme and spirochete infections going back all the way to 1908, but yet we still don’t have proper diagnostic testing, a vaccine, or a cure for Lyme disease while we are living in the United States of America, the most extraordinary country in the world,” Foster wrote.

“Something doesn’t add up here, and I will make it my life mission to figure this out, because nobody deserves to suffer this way in 2015.”

This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.com