MY LYME STORY & HOW YOU CAN RELATE
Ok so maybe there’s a part of you that is thinking “Liz has Lyme, so how does that relate to me exactly, if I don’t have Lyme?" I’m a firm believer it does, and here’s why…
It’s a common belief that countless ailments have a relationship to toxicity, inflammation, and therefore compromised immune systems. This means things like Lyme, cancer, autoimmunity of any kind, Alzheimer’s, autism, chronic illnesses etc.
The reality is, as this fabulous world turns, there are plenty of people in major health-related industries that are just after a buck ($$$). The domino effect here is that our food, products, chemicals, air and most everything we come in contact with day in and day out have the risk of being detrimental to our immune system and therefore our health…
I believe Lyme was in my system for at least 9 months before I started feeling symptoms. My symptoms started in March 2012. I had been in only the concrete jungle (NYC) and non-tick-endemic regions for 7 months prior. So the typical “you get a bite, then you see a rash, then you get a fever, then you feel like you have the flu” was pretty much irrelevant in my case.
What WAS happening in my case though was that my symptoms started at the end of a long Winter – and this Florida girl does not handle cold weather well. I also had an insane job, it was my busy season – 80-100 hour work weeks were not foreign; my grandfather had passed away the Summer prior, who was like a father to me; I would push my body and workout at 10PM or 6AM (my only options with my work schedule); I had gone through a breakup which resulted in me deciding to extract myself from my friend group; not to mention I had a somewhat healthy diet but didn’t shy away from daily diet cokes, processed foods as well as using un-researched, toxic beauty and cleaning products. So essentially, I believe this all lead to a perfect nightmare of a storm for my immune system due to the stressors and physical, emotional and mental fatigue. Therefore, leaving my immune system weak and susceptible to allowing Lyme to become active in my system.
After feeling my first symptoms, I started on my journey of seeing 15 reputable doctors, none of which would diagnose me with anything. Most Lyme patients are commonly misdiagnosed, unlike me, which means they couldn’t blame it on another weakness in my medical history since I had a clean slate (common misdiagnosis are depression, autoimmune, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue). I remember one of my family members one day telling me “well no wonder you’re fatigued, you’ve been pushing yourself for over 25 years and you finally need a rest!” Little did I know that was simultaneously somewhat annoying...and true :)
So what if I didn’t have all the stressors listed in paragraph 5, that Winter of 2012? Would I be healthy still with little to no symptoms of Lyme? I believe so. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people throughout the world that would test positive for the Lyme bacteria but do not show symptoms. It’s a sign of their body having the ability to contain the infection and the havoc it could wreak on their body.
And with autoimmune, something that European doctors claim is an inflammation and not a disease, or cancer which is essentially a part of our body that is trying to send us a message that something is wrong - with a strong immune system which includes a clean environment, I believe a good amount of these ailments could be avoided.
Herein lies the purpose of this post, the only healing that has seemed to be full proof so far, is strengthening my own body to do it’s job and fight this thing the best it can. And what does that involve? Practicing a lifestyle that would better boost and strengthen my immune system and everything related to it….directly related to a majority of health issues and/or prevention of those issues in the future. And this is my wish for each of you…
XXL