The Silver Lyming

Sam began experiencing symptoms from Lyme and tickborne illness when she was in high school. This was a very difficult time in life to be diagnosed, as she missed out on most of what is to be one of the best times of a young person's life. She was constantly incredibly fatigued, and had to take naps, had swollen joints, full body pain, and was hardly able to make it through a day. She's very grate...

Samantha's story is rather powerful. She was struck with Lyme and tick-borne illness as a child at 14 years old and struggled with getting a proper diagnosis like many of us do. What makes her story more interesting is that she DID get a diagnosis of Lyme and tick-borne illness from a Lyme--literate doctor (LLMD) but her pediatrician did not believe in the diagnosis, and urged her parents to look...

Quinn's story is no short of being a miracle and I hope you are as moved by it as I am. Quinn was sick for 10 years and had been told it was lupus and fibromyalgia. She was doing home care at the time and was helping someone who lived in a very moldy environment. This really heightened her symptoms. She started struggling with a lot of "mental disorders" but no one could ever really figure out wha...

Heather's struggle with dis-ease began when she was 4 years old. Her uncle had committed suicide and from that moment on, she can remember having health challenges including constipation and autoimmune issues. But no one really looked at why she was struggling and sick, just that she was, and they did their best to fix the symptoms.    Having these health challenges at such a young age set her up...

Lorrie experienced many strange symptoms over the course of a few months that ultimately led to her, losing the ability to walk. Doctors kept telling her that it was stress or menopause, and then they did not have Lyme in the state she lives in, but once she lost the ability to walk, they knew something was very wrong. She made a full recovery gratefully, and her story is rather inspirational. She...

All you avid outdoorsmen and hunters, take extra note of this week's episode with Jeremy Wawrzonek. He is just like you and loves to be outside. He knows about ticks and to take preventative measures when outside.    Unfortunately, eight years ago, he came into contact with the wrong tick in a bit of a different way at an outdoor wedding. Not all ticks are sick, but Jeremy remembers very well bein...

Susan's symptoms started, but she was unaware of ticks or the diseases they carry at the time. Her family had just moved and she was enjoying their new environment surrounded by nature. She would happily run after her children in the woods without a second thought. Her symptoms progressed and after about a year, she started googling them and was pretty sure she had found the culprit, Lyme disease....

Bill's story is another great one as it helps to highlight the differences in how tick-borne illnesses can affect us. Like many people, Bill is not fully sure where he was bitten by a tick but does vividly remember driving home from a golf outing and starting to feel like he contracted the flu. He woke up the next day with a fever of 103.9. He immediately ruled out the flu and Covid, and was basic...

Mike grew up on ranches and was exposed to various animals constantly. He was also constantly exposed to ticks and can remember finding them on him and pulling them off. His issues really did not start to be severe until college, however, possibly triggered by the added stress of school. He started sleeping for 15 hours a day and his roommate was becoming more and more concerned for him. But Mike...

Imagine having 38 surgeries and your doctor telling you he cannot operate on you anymore because you have had so many surgeries, but you still had health issues, and that they now really need to get to the root cause of her issues!?! This is what happened to Nancy. She has had 38 surgeries over three decades to combat issues in her body and she finally got to a neurosurgeon who finally told her th...

My guest this week knows the challenges of #lymedisease and #tickbornedisease all too well. Ryan struggled initially with mold poisoning which ultimately ended with Lyme over a 7 year stretch of time. He was often told there was nothing wrong with him, intil he finally found a doctor who ran specialized testing to get the true cause of Ryan's symptoms.    He was so changed by his experience, he kn...

This is an extra special episode as this is the story of my cousin, Saha, who has struggled with Lyme and tick-borne illness possibly from birth. She had bad colic as a baby and had a ton of digestive issues. So many of her symptoms were digestive related in nature, which may be a bit of a different presentation symptom-wise than most people experience. It unfortunately took her a VERY long time t...

As we have learned in previous episodes, Lyme can affect more than one family member. This is what happened to Carol and her family. Carol, her husband, and her daughter, were all impacted by Lyme/TBD. None of them are certain where they contracted it, but they are all certain that they had it. Carol and her husband did not suffer tremendously and gratefully were able to recover with minimal effor...

Chris was a terrific athlete as a young child until about the age of 10. He can remember a day where he had a burning sensation on the back of his neck, and when his mom looked, she saw what potentially may have been an insect bite. It actually turned out to be a bullseye rash, but at the time, it was not quickly recognized as such. After that experience, when he returned to school and sports, he...

Carrie's story is a little bit unique in that she herself does not have Lyme or tick-borne illness, but two of her daughters have contracted it, one of them contracted it twice. In supporting her daughters in the recoveries, she learned all too well how expensive and difficult it is to treat these infections. When her daughter Sam began experiencing symptoms, Carrie did not know what was wrong wit...

If you don't already believe in miracles, you will after hearing Ricky's story of healing from Lyme and tick-borne illness. Ricky's started with a light bull's-eye rash on his chest (that alone is rather miraculous since only about 35% of people get a bull's-eye rash) in 2017. His Lyme test initially was positive but then another test only showed him positive to one band. He was still referred to...

Can you imagine eating your lunch and suddenly losing the ability to chew your food? This is exactly what happened to Patrick one day. He was eating food with his wife and lost the ability to finish chewing. All he really could do was fall face first into bed hoping it would pass since he did not have health insurance at the time. Sadly, it did not pass, and he went to the walk-in clinic the next...

This week's episode is well-timed with it being six years since my diagnosis with Lyme/TBI which is a moment that has completely changed my life for the better (and for those of you who know me, you know 17 is my Angel number so I could not resist using it for my episode). I remember thinking about dying so many times in the months leading up to August 4, 2017, and FINALLY had an answer that I cou...

The timing to release this week's episode couldn't be much better! This weeks's guest has alpha-gal syndrome. That's the one being talked about in the news so much the last few days that gives you an allergy to red meat and other animal products. What's even crazier is we know that it comes from a tick bite, but the doctor that found his alpha-gal REFUSED to test for additional tick-borne infectio...

Dr. Sue Eisen is a functional medicine doctor and holistic chiropractor. She gratefully had a medical background to guide her to a diagnosis of Lyme and tickborne illness potentially sooner than the average person. She feels she was bit in the winter of 2008 when she started with a general fatigue and possible bulls' eye rash (Erythema migrans) and in the back of her brain she kept hearing "Lyme d...

Like many of us, Gigi Thibodeau is not sure how she contracted Lyme/TBI. She started to feel unwell about 5 years ago, July 4, 2018. She experienced what she will call a "tipping point" (I have thought about this many times with my own story and with others I have interviewed, is there a tipping point in which we get bit so many times, it is overload for our bodies or is it already in us and a maj...

Sandy and her husband Maurice are no strangers to the diseases ticks can infect us with. They were both infected with Lyme/TBI, and like so many others, are not particularly sure where they contracted it. Sandy thinks they may have been bit when they would take long strolls int he woods and grassy fields where they used to live but they never became acutely ill, it was more of a gradual onset of i...

Patrick's story started with him finding a "bruise" on his chest and he did not think twice about it. Shortly thereafter, he began having health issues and he began trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He saw between 30-35 doctors and had NO answers for the that started going wrong in his body. They kept telling him it was "stress" which worried him because he is an airline pilot, and tho...

I am excited to release this milestone episode #10! These are so much fun for me to make, and this episode is no different. I have known Allyssa for quite some time now. She and I met back when I was first diagnosed with Lyme and worked on a few things together. She gave a talk on nutrition to my support group when I ran it in-person AND we had kicked around the idea of doing this podcast together...