Tick Boot Camp

Åsa Rydmark is a 48-year-old woman from Sweden who has traveled all around the world. She’s worked in the medical field as a Registered Nurse (RN), research nurse at a gynecological ward, and for the last two years as a research coordinator at Linköping University. Ms. Rydmark had many tick bites throughout her life, got a bullseye rash when she was 14, and Lyme came out and wreaked havoc when she...

Karen Widaman is a 62-year-old certified dog trainer and owner of a large dog training company from Glendora, California. Despite working in a high-risk industry, Ms. Widaman was unaware of that her contact with thousands of dogs increased her Lyme vulnerability. In 2015, she began to suffer from stomach, foot, and hand pain her doctors believed to be unrelated symptoms in part because she tested...

Casey Fillian is a 45-year-old personal trainer, massage therapist, and competitive runner from Marlboro, New Jersey.   Ms. Fillian is also a Lyme disease pioneer: during her childhood she was one of the first people in the United States diagnosed with Lyme. After suffering a tick bite while attending a summer camp, she “developed a fever, general malaise… a bad flu, [her] knee blew up to 3 times...

Grace Anderson is a 21-year-old Lyme disease advocate from the coast of Maine. She's currently studying mental health and human services. Ms. Anderson first became sick with symptoms of Lyme when she was 12 at a Taylor Swift concert with the following symptoms: dizziness, nausea, swollen feet, excessive sweating, and vomiting. These symptoms quickly subsided, but they came back a month later and n...

Rosemeyris Estrella is personal trainer and health and nutrition coach from Pennsylvania. She grew up and spent most of her adult life residing in the urban New York City borough of The Bronx. Recently, Ms. Estrella and husband decided to offer their 4 children the opportunity to trade city living for the freedom, fresh air, and open spaces offered in rural Pennsylvania. Shortly after moving to th...

Evangelina Vensel is an author , life coach , certified Master PSYCH-K facilitator, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner, and certified Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner from Washington State. Although she had been symptomatic and ill since early childhood, she was not diagnosed with Lyme disease until surpassing her 40th birthday. She sought treatment with over 20 health c...

In this powerful return appearance on the Tick Boot Camp Podcast , Dr. Alan MacDonald joins hosts Matt Sabatello and Richard Johannessen for a deep, unfiltered conversation about the research he spent a lifetime pursuing — research that remains controversial, increasingly validated, and deeply consequential for patients with chronic Lyme disease. Recorded decades after his earliest discoveries, th...

Carley Rudd is a 34-year-old second generation artist and Travel Photographer from Portland, Maine. Her work has taken her across the globe and has been featured in Vogue, Condé Nast Traveller, National Geographic, Architectural Digest, and Travel & Leisure. Ms. Rudd suffered from Lyme disease for 10 years before she was diagnosed in 2021. She balanced her pre-diagnosed symptoms and travel by...

Dr. Christina Rahm is a medical, clinical and research scientist, entrepreneur, author , Chief Science Officer for ROOT Wellness , and Chair of the International Science Nutrition Society from Brentwood, TN. Her resume includes working for pharmaceutical giants such as Johnson & Johnson, UCB, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Pfizer and she has created multiple provisional patents, proprietary formula...

Zack Jones is a 48-year-old professional guide, trainer, trip designer, and photographer residing in Frankfurt, Germany. He is the “Zack of all Trades” with his current company and “recently added smitten father to an amazing baby girl to the CV”. Mr. Jones described his life before Lyme as “pretty good and at the same time full of blissful ignorance”. While on a trip to Honduras, he and a travel...

Jeni Quante is a 29-year-old Registered Nurse (RN) and chronic illness patient advocate from San Antonio, Texas. She has earned high regard from the Lyme disease community for producing creative educational content on social media platforms including TikTok and Instagram. Ms. Quante was born with Congenital Lyme disease, but the undiagnosed illness did not become debilitating until the age of 14....

Axel Roelants is an entrepreneur and former athlete from Belgium. He is the co-founder of 4Gold , an athletic supplement, health, and performance company. In 2016, Mr. Roelants suffered a broken neck in a dirt bike accident. Shortly after the injury, he began to suffer from a diverse and progressive set of classic Lyme disease symptoms that his doctors attributed to his traumatic injuries. Trustin...

Ali Lazowski is the 31-year-old John’s Hopkins University educated founder and CEO of Bare Life . Bare Life is a company that creates “crave worthy and easy to enjoy plant based and gluten free foods, inspired by Ms. Lazowski’s journey with chronic Lyme disease”. Undiagnosed Lyme disease symptoms began to interfere with Ms. Lazowski’s goal driven life during her junior year in high school. Beginni...

Debbie Kimberg is a 55-year-old author, activist, and director of International Expansion for Merchant Services at JP Morgan Chase from Dallas, Texas. Ms. Kimberg, her mother, and her 3 children have been diagnosed with Lyme disease. Despite 3 generations of the family exhibiting classic Lyme disease symptoms, Lyme was not a consideration until after the youngest child, Sammy, was diagnosed. Sammy...

Georgia Grace Ritchie Wood is a professional ski coach, yoga instructor, poet, and podcaster from Australia. She currently resides in Woodstock, Vermont, USA. Ms. Wood was born with a kidney disorder that rendered her immune compromised. Her parents were advised that she would require kidney reconstruction surgery and should not engage in activities such as skiing or skydiving. Ms. Wood was also b...

Greg Lee is the 55-year-old founder of the Lyme Research and Healing Center and GoodbyeLyme.com . He is a nationally recognized expert in the use of Chinese herbs and alternative medicine for the treatment of persistent infections. Mr. Lee began his career as a systems engineer on NASA projects such as the Hubble Telescope, the Space Station, robotics, and climate modeling projects. The stresses o...

Dr. Janis J. Weis, Ph. D. is a Professor of Pathology in the Division of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Dr Weis developed a professional passion for studying Lyme disease when she and her family lived in the east coast Lyme belt during the time she performed her post-doctoral training in immunology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard University Medi...

Sarah Corlis is a mother of two children with Lyme disease from Alpharetta, Georgia. Growing up, she had a very active social life and used to work out all the time. Sarah was a human resources manager until she was 34 years old when she took some time off to have her kids. A few years later, she returned to work as a realtor with a more flexible schedule for 6 years until she decided to work full...

Amanda Millie is a 35-year-old model, blogger and podcaster from London, England. Shortly after Ms. Millie’s family immigrated from Africa to the UK, she was bitten by a tick on a school camping trip. She “picked off the tick and moved on with [her] life” because she was “unaware of what that bite meant”. Around the age of 19, Ms. Millie “started getting intense fatigue” which she attributed to li...

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer is a nationally recognized Lyme disease medical doctor, educator, and author from Denver, Colorado. Dr. Kinderlehrer is acknowledged for his wide-ranging expertise in the fields of nutrition, allergy, environmental medicine, healing of the mind/body/spirit as a whole, and Lyme disease. His passion for treating Lyme disease was born out of his personal experience. He is the...

Dina Benedetto is a 38-year-old beauty and skin care industry professional from Long Island, New York. Ms. Benedetto’s Lyme disease journey was ignited by a common stomach virus that infected several members of her family at the same time. While her family’s symptoms dissipated, her illness became increasingly more severe. She suffered from confusion, heart palpitations, air hunger, anxiety, and p...

Jill Wichner is a 48-year-old entrepreneur, copywriter, and content marketing strategist. She is also a board member and Vice President of social media and digital content marketing for the Pennsylvania Lyme Resource Network . Ms. Wichner’s Lyme disease journey began when she “noticed a bullseye rash on the back of [her] arm” while on a Caribbean cruise with her husband. Thinking the rash was “a l...

Kristen Harris is a 39-year-old small business owner from Westchester County, New York. Her story is different than most of our guests. Ms. Harris was very sick with Lyme disease in 1998, reached remission in 2000, and in 2016 fell ill again due to Lyme. She went to college, got a job, traveled, and lived a very active life from 2000 to 2016. At the age of 33, Ms. Harris relapsed and suffered seve...

Andi Czyz is a multi-talented 23-year-old Certified Functional Nutrition Practitioner, Holistic Health Practitioner, and Social Media Manager originally from midwestern suburban Illinois. Ms. Czyz’s Lyme disease journey began when she suffered a tick bite in March 2020. Within weeks she suffered “full body numbness, extreme brain fog, tremors, anxiety, and knee swelling”. Despite displaying classi...

Ali Goodman is a 24-year-old dancer and Pilates instructor from San Diego, California. Ms. Goodman’s young life has been punctuated by a passion for the performing arts and health challenges that would hinder her artistic progress. “Never feeling completely normal,” she and her family had to deal with random medical anomalies from the time [she] was born. Undeterred by a “different [medical] diagn...