How Andrea Triumphed Over Lyme

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back to Integrative Lime Solutions with Dr. Carl Feld. I am so excited about the show that we have ahead of us. We have some phenomenal information that could save lives. I am Dr. Michael Carlfelt, and with me, I have my co host, Tanya Hobo. You're going to need to tune in. [00:00:21] Speaker B: To what's going on today. [00:00:23] Speaker A: The information is impact, so, yeah, don't step away. [00:00:29] Speaker C: So excited. Let's go ahead and get this started. Welcome to Integrative Lime Solutions with Dr. Carl felt. And we're super excited to have our guest today, Andrea. So thank you so much for joining, and I'm looking forward to hearing your, I know, very, very long battle. So welcome. [00:00:54] Speaker D: Thank you. Thank you for having me today. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Well, so long battle. It must have started a long time ago. [00:01:03] Speaker D: I was bitten in, I think, march or April of 2014. So we had just moved into a new building, had just launched my own business, and I had a bullseye on my arm. And at the time, I had no idea what it was. I wasn't sick from it. It was just this really what I thought at the time. Cool bite. And I went on with my life, and I didn't go to the doctor. And so, fast forward a couple of months from there, and it went downhill very quickly. How's that? [00:01:43] Speaker B: What does downhill mean? What were you noticing by the time. [00:01:49] Speaker D: So that was March, April, that I had noticed the bite. I had a really bad stomach flu after that, and I didn't connect the dots to that until much later on. By the time I hit July of 2014 and we had driven home to go see family in Pennsylvania, when I was there, I was having a lot of difficulty with walking, with stamina. I couldn't barely walk 100 yards without being out of breath and feeling exhausted. And it was when I was at home with my parents that my parents were like, you need to be tested for Lyme. This sounds a lot like Lyme. My whole body hurt, every joint, every muscle I was keenly aware of in my body, and they were the ones that pointed it out to me when I was. [00:02:38] Speaker B: How? How did they recognize Lyme? I mean, had they had interactions with it before? Because that's not a very common thing for somebody just to kind of throw that out immediately from the get go, right? [00:02:51] Speaker D: It is endemic up in Pennsylvania, and so they were aware of it. My dad hunts and fishes, and my stepmom was very active in gardening, and it was actually her sister that had Lyme, had been bitten by ticks multiple times over the years, and had Lyme disease. And I guess it kind of hit a chord in something that I said to her that kind of sounded like her sister. And so they were like, you need to be tested. You can be tested when you're here. And so I did. I actually made an appointment with the primary care doctor when I was there, and I asked to be tested, and I told him kind of what was going on. They used a two tier system. And so that was the first time I was given, I think the Eliza, and the Eliza just said, negative, you're negative. And so the doctor called and we were actually driving home when they actually called with my results, and they said, no, you don't have Lyme. Go ahead and follow up with your PCP when you get home. And so when I got home, I made an appointment with my primary care physician here in Texas and went and asked for. I was just like, just run the gamut of everything. I was like, when I was in Pennsylvania, they rolled out Lyme disease, so I need to know what it is. And they came back with pre diabetic. You're pre diabetic. My a one c, I think, was 6.7. And I remember my dad telling me, because he was diabetic, he was like, you would never know. This is just something that sneaks up on you. And I remember saying to my primary care physician, I was like, I don't know how anybody could miss being pre diabetic. Like, I feel like a bus hit me. And I felt that way every single day, every minute of the day. And so I was just perplexed. But he did, he started me on metformin, and probably to this day, I still think that the metformin probably saved my life. [00:04:58] Speaker B: What did you notice with metformin? Because obviously that is for blood sugar. [00:05:05] Speaker D: It is for blood sugar, yeah. But then for lung, I had swollen up. I had gained probably 35 pounds, most of it in my abdomen area. And being on metformin within, I want to say, a three or four day period of time, I had shed like twelve pounds of whatever it was. But I started to feel better. I felt like things were moving. I don't know. I stayed on Metformin for a year. And then of course, my a one c levels went down to 4.7 or something like that, 4.8, I think it was. And he was like, well, I'm going to take you off of it. And then, of course, the symptomology built again and again and again. The pain never subsided during that time. Even with it, it's just some of the excess weight gain. But at the time I felt like I was dying and I really had no rhyme or reason why. So that was probably the first time I used something that I could feel it actually working in my body. I know that that sounds weird too, but I could actually feel my body releasing stuff, toxins. It was a really uncanny feeling. [00:06:29] Speaker C: So if that's very interesting, that metformin, of all things, would make you feel better. So you said that during the time, even when you were on metformin, you still had the pain. You still had all your pain. So what exactly did you notice that was better. [00:06:50] Speaker D: For me during the first year with the metformin was just being able to kind of help my GI stuff a little bit. I was super distended and it did seem to help that a little bit. I was able to lose some weight, which I wasn't able to do with just curbing what I was eating and exercising and doing the normal things that I would have normally done. But it was able to move some of the water, what I called water weight or toxins, off of my body. [00:07:27] Speaker B: So your pain was the same, but how about your energy? Was that changed? [00:07:32] Speaker D: No, I run my own business, and so I was doing ten hour days, and by the end of the day I just hit a brick wall. I would come home and I would be on the couch, and that was it. By the time I made it home at 6630, I was done for the day. And I typically slept about ten to 12 hours a night. And if I could sleep more, I would have. And then I would get up and do it the next day. [00:08:05] Speaker C: Yeah, we do what we got to do, right? [00:08:08] Speaker D: I didn't know any different. [00:08:09] Speaker C: Yes. If the doctor took you off the metformin after a year. And so then what happened? And was that the only thing they initially said to you that year prior was like, you're good, but your a one c is high. [00:08:30] Speaker D: Yeah, my a one c was high. I had some stuff with my thyroid and so I had some nodules that kind of popped up and I went in, had those aspirated, and of course they couldn't give me a reason for why it was doing it. And so nobody ever connected any of the things that I was saying or the things that I was experiencing. By the time I got to year two, still had all of the pain. Excuse me. And I had really bad pain in my calves, in both of my calves, and then also in my achilles areas of your body that you don't really think about unless they really hurt, or you're trying to walk, and then it morphed into plantar fasciitis. So the same type of thing. I ended up doing a lot of things at home and a lot of research at home, looking for what could cause this. And I always found my way back to. I had this weird looking rash. My parents thought it was a bullseye rash. They really thought it was a Lyme disease. And so I started, probably after that first year, really looking at it and then constantly talking myself out of it, if that makes sense. I guess maybe I didn't want it to be that. I don't. It really. It took some time. I joined a year after that, two years after that, I actually had joined a local lime group in my area in northeast Houston, and started attending some of the meetings there. I was working with my primary care doctor, and I saw him on a regular basis. So every two or three months, I was back in for additional testing. He must have ruled in and out a million different things, from cancers to autoimmune stuff. Anything that you can think of, I think we tested for at one time or another. And I finally said to him, I was like, will you run a western line block, please? And he had walked this journey with me, and at this point in time, I was really sick. And he said, if you want to chase this rabbit down this rabbit hole, okay. And so he did. And I had four bands were positive. And so he came back and said, not Lyme. So I had one IgM and three iggs. And at that moment, I knew that even though he said it was negative, I knew it was positive. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah, did. [00:11:15] Speaker C: Well, I'm glad that you knew that. And I have to go all the way back to the very beginning a couple of minutes ago, because you might be the first person. If not, there's only a handful of them that has ever said that they had the bullseye ration. Didn't know what it meant, because I did, too. I got, okay, there's a spider in my bed. Like, what kind of a weird spider is this? And it went away, and everything was fine. But I didn't know anything about Lyme disease and did not know what a bullseye rash meant. Very frustrating, but. So I'm glad that you were smart enough to know that this test, even though he said no, you know, it's a yes. [00:11:53] Speaker D: By that point in time, I did. I didn't know a lot about it. I had read a little bit about the testing. I knew the testing was faulty. I knew that the Eliza could have been negative. I knew that there were different strains of Lyme at that point in time, so the strain that's prevalent here in Texas is different than the strain that's prevalent on the east coast. And so I knew enough of those things to kind of just take it. And I joked with, mean, we had been walking this path for almost five years, and I was like, so, look, there's only a couple of bacteriums that have the spirochet. Like, do you think I have syphilis? And at this point in time, we're joking. And he's like, no, I don't think you have syphilis. And I was like, well, then, what else is out there? And he kind of hemmed and nod about it, but he said, the test is negative. And so that's about as far as I went there. My primary care doctor, he is still my primary care doctor. And we had an aha moment a year after that, maybe a year and a half after that, but all of my tests at that point in time were all wonky. So my a one c was high again. My lipids were super high. All kinds of stuff that was odd was now showing up, and it had been five years. He was like, you're overweight. And I was like, thanks for noticing. [00:13:24] Speaker C: I didn't know. [00:13:26] Speaker D: I didn't notice. For some people, it makes them thin. It did not make me thin. So I guess that's just how my body handles it. But he noticed, and he was like, you really need to diet. You really need to lose some weight. [00:13:44] Speaker C: Kind of hard to do thing when you're in a lot of pain. So this whole five years that it took you to figure this out, were you just the same constantly, just no energy and pain? Did you get worse or go through phases of better? [00:13:59] Speaker D: Yeah. No, I mean, it was just a downhill spiral, right? So, I mean, it started with the pain, and when you thought that that couldn't get any worse, it would find a new muscle that you didn't even know you had, like, my achilles for years. And then the planner's fasciitis. And at one point in time, I only walked around in Skechers at work and at home and anywhere I was going. And I had to have the memory foam, otherwise it just hurt incredibly bad. And then I started to get some neurological stuff, and I think if I had known what I know now, I probably would have been more scared, but I didn't know. Sometimes you just don't know all the stuff. I started having anxiety, but then I started having really scary panic attacks, and I had never had those before, to the point where by the end of the day, they just started becoming daily. It was a daily thing that would happen by the time I would get home at night and I would try to meditate and I would try to give myself some downtime. At the end of the day, I thought I was just super stressed and overworked and all of the things that you tell yourself, but I was having panic attacks every single day and sometimes multiple times a day, which was even worse. And then even that picked up during that time period. [00:15:26] Speaker C: And so can you describe, because everybody's different. Can you describe what your panic attacks were like? Because for us, like you, I didn't know what it was. I called 911. I thought I was dying, and it was an anxiety attack. I'm like, really? I've never had that in my life. But maybe there's some listeners out there that are going through some weird things and they don't know what it is. Maybe you can just kind of explain what yours was like. [00:15:57] Speaker D: Sure. So I would feel it as it would start to build in my chest, so I would feel a heaviness, a pressure, and then I would become keenly aware of that. And, of course, once you start thinking about it, it's the only thing that you can think about, even if you try not to. And then it would just keep building and building. And all of a sudden, I would just like. I remember I jumped up the one night and I was like, I need to go to the ER. I think I actually said that. And I don't like to do any of those things. And my husband just kind of looked at me, like, kind of shocked. He was like, what's wrong? I was like, I think I'm having a heart attack. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. I think I'm having a heart attack. And he was like, if you need to go, we'll go. But I started crying with it, too, and it was just kind of a weird series of events, I guess. And he was like, okay, get your things if you want to go. And I was like, no, wait. And I was shaking. I remember shaking really badly. And so for me, that's how they kind of just build until you feel like you just can't. And I'm one of those people. I feel like I've got a really good, level head. And so I don't typically let anxiety or stress or any of those things get to me, but it would get to the point where it would just feel like it was going to burst. Yeah. And that's what it felt like to me over time. [00:17:44] Speaker C: With those. Did you find anything that helped you through that, like any type of breathing, or did you do medications for it? [00:17:55] Speaker D: I tried, actually, lots of things. So I work with kids that have disabilities. I work with kids that have anxiety. It was od to be able to relate to them in a brand new way, because if you've never experienced one, it's hard to imagine what it might be like. I don't have to imagine anymore. And so I completely understand the panic that they feel when they start to come on and needing to have something to do. So I tried the deep breathing. I tried the name five things in the room that are blue, name five things that are gray, name five things that are white to try to switch what I was thinking about. And ultimately what I ended up using was Xanax on an as needed basis. And so when I would start to feel the pressure in my chest, that's when I would take it. [00:18:50] Speaker C: Okay. And that's good. There's a lot of pharmaceuticals that I'm not a huge fan of most of them, but I tell people I was on pain meds, I was on antidepressants, I was on anxiety meds. But you know what? I think those things, in a way, kind of saved my life because I needed something, and whatever I was doing wasn't working. So, I mean, we can only push our bodies so far before we just lose it. I tell people, if you're struggling, they're like, I don't want to take that, or I don't want to do. Maybe you need to. And I'm not pushing pharmaceuticals. Trust me, that's the last thing I would ever do. But I just think that sometimes there's a time and place for things, and when we're dealing with so much and trying to get better and kill this stuff off, and we can't even keep our anxiety under control, or we have so much pain that we physically can't walk down the hallway to go to the bathroom, there's just things that I think is okay to do, even though sometimes we really have to talk ourselves into it. So I was on it for years. Luckily, I'm not on anything anymore and haven't been for a while. But I did what I had to do, and I think that people need to realize it's okay. [00:20:10] Speaker D: Yeah, I agree. And one of the things that happened year four is I had made my way back to thinking it was probably lime. And so I started treating with herbals, not knowing that using some of the herbals that I was doing was going to hit the lime and the Bartonella, and that I was actually provoking because I was killing stuff off in my body. And so I was probably giving myself the panic attacks by the end of the day because I was on a kill cycle. I don't know if I could have even done treatment without having at least a PRN on standby, knowing that I had it there. Just knowing kind of what it was like to be killing things off and what it was doing to my body. [00:21:06] Speaker C: So you started these herbals on your own without. [00:21:11] Speaker D: I did. [00:21:11] Speaker C: Without a doctor. Was it just research that you did and what did you do? [00:21:20] Speaker D: Yeah, it was. At this point in time, I was desperate to get better and I came across a product called tick recovery sancera. Tick recovery. And that's what I used. I mean, I was taking, I want to say, six capsules, maybe three in the morning and three in the midday and another set of three in the evening. So maybe nine capsules a day. [00:21:50] Speaker B: And what kind of product was that? What was in it? [00:21:54] Speaker D: Cat's claw. It's Gotiana ceda, I want to say. And then there's another one, but it's the four main ones. It's been reformulated since then and it's got some other things in it now, but it was definitely hitting and super helpful for what I was fighting. [00:22:24] Speaker B: That's when you started noticing the panic attacks after that, or you had panic attacks prior to. [00:22:31] Speaker D: Yeah, no, I was having them prior to, but I'm saying, when you look back on it, I was probably causing them myself, because here I am treating myself and probably overdoing it. It certainly wasn't on a. I didn't know anything about titration schedules and those types of things at that point in time. [00:22:49] Speaker B: So when your primary. When he saw. Well, I guess he didn't. He said, you're negative. What was his solution with everything that was going on? He just kind of shook his head and threw up his arms. I have no idea what to do with him. [00:23:11] Speaker D: I was a frequent flyer with him at this point in time. And so, like I said, he tested for anything I wanted to test for. So, I mean, if I asked for a test for this or a test for autoimmune stuff, he tested for that. He tested for cancer stuff, he tested anything I wanted to be tested for, he was gamed for doing. At one point in time, he suggested that perhaps I was attention seeking and we had a very frank discussion, because I had a response set already planned for that because I never went to the doctor prior. And then I was having this episode of Time where I was every three, four, or five weeks. I was back in, like, can we look at this? Can we do this? And so I'm sure it did feel like to him, I was attention seeking, and I was, because I hurt and I knew something was wrong and I was trying to get help for it, but I also do behavior for a living. And so I knew when he started saying, you're attention seeking, I wanted to be able to have a conversation with him about, I'm not attention seeking. Like, there's something wrong, and I'm really trying to pinpoint what's wrong. [00:24:29] Speaker B: Was that your response? Because obviously that is something that a lot of doctors are telling Lyme patients that they're attention seeking. So what would be a response that you think that they should have to their PCP to kind of negate that comment in a way? [00:24:50] Speaker D: I'm not attention seeking. Literally, there's something wrong with me, and I'm trying to pinpoint what it is. I know in my case, I was like, I know that there's something wrong. This is not how I normally feel. This is not how I normally act. This is not how I normally respond. At the end of the day, I don't normally have panic attacks. I'm pretty articulate. I don't normally have issues with trying to find words when I'm talking to people. I'm not normally tired. I don't normally have to sleep for ten to 12 hours a night. I mean, I used to sleep four to five. That was the norm for me. All the way through my thirty s, I was trying to articulate for him why I wasn't attention seeking and why I was really trying to pinpoint what was going on with me, because I knew something was wrong and I knew that I was really sick. [00:25:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:25:51] Speaker C: It's so hard because I think deep down, when we're trying to find our diagnosis, we know something's wrong with us, because we know our bodies, we're not all super in tune with our bodies like we kind of are now, but we know what is normal and what's not normal and what we normally could do and what we can't do now. And so I think a lot of people go through a phase of maybe I not necessarily am seeking attention, but maybe it is in my head, like, maybe what is wrong with me? Am I just really overworked? We kind of go through that, I think so many people do in our mind. And so I think maybe for you, being in the field that you work in, you were clearer about knowing that it wasn't in your head. [00:26:47] Speaker D: Right. I mean, it clearly was in my head. [00:26:49] Speaker C: Right. But not that there really was something there. [00:26:52] Speaker D: Right? Yeah. [00:26:53] Speaker C: I always say, you know what? It was in my head back then, but it was like toxins. It was poison in my head. It was lime in my head. Yeah. [00:27:00] Speaker D: Right. Absolutely. [00:27:03] Speaker B: You did this product with the combination of these four ingredients and starting to feel having anxiety. So, as you didn't titrate, how did the rest of your body feel? I mean, did you have more pain, more exhaustion? Did it feel better? Did it feel what was happening with the rest of you? [00:27:26] Speaker D: Yeah, before I started it, I felt absolutely horrible. I will say the anxiety and the panic attacks probably picked up after I started the tick recovery. But I would say it did help. In my case, it did remove some of the pain, some of the brain fog. I had really bad brain fog, really bad word retrieval, really bad memory. At that point in time. I had a lot of difficulties, a lot of hypersensitivities, and it did seem to help with some of those things, but I wasn't 100% while I was taking it. And, I mean, maybe overall, in recovery terms, maybe got me to 60%, 65%. [00:28:24] Speaker C: And was that all you were doing at the time, was just that tick recovery? [00:28:29] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, that's all I was doing at that point in time. [00:28:32] Speaker C: There was no other detoxing or any binders or just taking that. [00:28:38] Speaker D: No binders. I was doing lemon waters to help with detox. That was one of the things that the group had talked so much about. I was wearing some stuff to lower emfs. Yeah, no binders at that point in time. Okay. [00:28:55] Speaker C: And so how long were you on this little part of your journey? [00:29:01] Speaker D: That was probably a good six to nine months or so. And then we had a doctor who would eventually end up being my Lyme literate medical doctor, show up at one of our local Lyme groups to come and talk about he was taking over another doctor's practice. The other doctor was located up towards the. Was actually, that doctor was retiring, and he was going to be taking over his practice, and he was going to be in the northeast part of Houston. And so when he came to speak, I had some of my medical stuff with me because I knew he was coming, and I was like, take a look at this. Do you think? And he was like, yes. And I was like, when are you accepting patients. And so I was literally his first patient, and that was January of 2019, so almost a full five years. [00:30:10] Speaker C: Wow. So were you his guinea pig or, like, literally his first patient or just moving into a new practice? [00:30:18] Speaker D: Yeah. He had been obgyn. He has first hand experience with Lyme and Bartonella and tick borne illnesses and mold. And so he was switching from. Switching gears from what he had done before into a new area. And so he actually had done some training with Horowitz. And I might have been a guinea pig, and I didn't even care. Right. When you feel like you're dying. I would have done almost anything. I would have done almost anything just to get back to somewhat normal. [00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So when you say personal experience, had he dealt with it himself personally? [00:31:07] Speaker D: Yes. So he had dealt with it personally, and then he has a child that has congenital as well. [00:31:19] Speaker B: You've been taking your supplement for a bit, and then he started you on kind of the next step. What did that look like? [00:31:29] Speaker D: He tried to start me on minocycline, and that went very poorly. And so we tried to start it, I want to say, two or three different times, and I just could not tolerate it. It made me so incredibly sick, violently ill. I could feel the nausea, just sit there and build and build and build until I would vomit. And that was literally the cycle from the time I took it until I vomited, and then by the time I would vomit, I would be time for the next cycle of it. And so we ended up putting that one on hold and went to calythromycin. And so I started the calythromycin, and I actually did quite well on that. And then rifampin. We layered in rifampin, and I did well with rifampin, too. Hydrochloroquine. And then we went back to minocycline after about three or four months, and I pushed through it to be able to get to the other side of it. And minocycline actually ended up being one of the medicines I think probably did a lot of, was very helpful in my situation, was able to cross the blood brain barrier and really get into the neurological part of it and be able to clear it out from there. And then he added methylene blue. And then we finished the first. After about twelve months, we finished with double dap zone procedure. [00:33:12] Speaker B: It is fascinating when you kind of take something that is really working well, how horrible you feel when something is really working well. [00:33:23] Speaker C: Your indicator that you know it's working right. [00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:28] Speaker D: And I kept saying to him, I was like, there's a part of me that thinks that I really need this if my body is responding this horribly to it. And I was like, and I'm not a glutton for punishment. There's something that's telling me, I really need this, and I will stand by that statement. My body really needed to be able to work through it and push through it. It was a really helpful medication, and I did four antibiotics and hydrochloroquine and methyl and blue all at the same time. I hear people talk about that all the time. They just can't believe it. And I'm like, I've done it. It's not fun, but I've done it. And for me, it got me to remission not once, but twice. [00:34:20] Speaker B: And how long did this journey take on these different antibiotics and hydrochloroquine? [00:34:29] Speaker D: So I started in January of 2019 is when I saw him, and probably started that protocol by March, and then by the following March, I was already in remission and finishing double dapzone. So I did a full twelve months, and they say two to three months for every year that you go untreated and undiagnosed. So at that point in time, he was thinking ten to 15 months, twelve to 15 months, and I ended up doing twelve. [00:35:05] Speaker B: Okay, and what did remission look like for you? I mean, completely pain free, no brain functioning. Perfect. Emotionally? Great. No pain. [00:35:16] Speaker D: Yeah, I had weight that just melted off of me. I had my brain worked again. I didn't have pain. I could go and hike, and I had stamina. I could be out and run. I could do five k's if I wanted to, which I did, because I lost the ability to run and had to learn how to run. And then I ran just to make sure I wouldn't lose how to run, which was an interesting thing for me. So, I mean, it just. Everything that I had taken for granted, I guess, previously, and had lost, I had gotten back with maybe the exception of the hypersensitivity when driving at high rates of speed. That still bothered me, but even that had improved significantly. [00:36:09] Speaker B: I'm curious, what does losing the ability to run look like? Meaning that you weren't coordinated enough to kind of put 1ft in front of the other. [00:36:20] Speaker D: I couldn't do it. I mean, I almost lost the ability to walk, and I didn't understand that when it happened at the very beginning. And that was one of the things that I told my husband. I was like, I don't care if I tell you I want to sit, make me walk. I couldn't run. I didn't have the stamina. My body didn't know how to do it. But the same thing was happening with the walking as well. Like, I would get up to go walk, and, I mean, I would look at him and say, aren't you tired? And he was like, no, I'm like, this doesn't. You're not exhausted. It was almost like the connections weren't there to be able to do it. [00:37:01] Speaker B: Because you have the stamina part that I don't have, the energy. I just. Muscles aren't strong enough, and I'm exhausted. But then you also have the kind of neurological where you're kind of able to do the motion and kind of brain, able to send the signals to the leg to move appropriately. So you felt like you lost that aspect as well. [00:37:26] Speaker D: I did. I couldn't run even if I had wanted to. And I tried, and I wasn't able to do it. And then I kept walking. So walking was important. It was an important part of every day, and I would try. It was like the motor coordination wasn't there. I wasn't able to. [00:37:51] Speaker B: How about other motor coordinations, like writing your name on a piece of paper? Those type of fine motor skills, were they still there? [00:38:02] Speaker D: They were still there, yeah. No, I mean, I had to sign my name and wrote my name every single day for work. So, I mean, I didn't lose any of the fine motor stuff. Just running and almost walking. Fascinating. But remission looked like being able to run again, and then I could do five k's. I play soccer now. [00:38:33] Speaker C: You said second time. So you were in remission. You had your life back minus a little bit of sensitivity, driving at high speeds. But everything else was amazing. And then what happened? How long did that last? [00:38:49] Speaker D: I still lurked around some of the boards I was a part of that had helped me along the way. And I was still having the hypersensitivity stuff just really bothered me. I would also get some balanced stuff from time to time, some, like, vertigo type stuff. And at that point in time, one of the moderators, I had sent her a private message, and I was just like, you mentioned something about mold, or I was like, can you tell me about it? What should I be looking for? And I don't know if I would have ever known anything about mold otherwise, but then I went down a rabbit hole with that. And so the building I had been working in from the time that we had moved into it, it had been in disrepair, and we had asked for it to be repaired, but it just hadn't been. And it turns out that it was just completely infested with mold behind the walls, in the ceiling, and the roof. It was actually condemned, and we ended up moving out of that building. But she had thought that some of the lingering symptoms were related to the mold and not Lyme or Bartonella. [00:40:13] Speaker C: Yeah. And that's crazy to me, that you were able to feel so well being surrounded by obviously very bad mold, that the building was condemned. [00:40:25] Speaker D: It was condemned, yeah. [00:40:26] Speaker C: Because a lot of people, they fight it and they can't get better. And sometimes mold is the final ticket for them. So for you to have this and feel pretty darn good, well, crazy journey. It makes no sense, right? [00:40:43] Speaker D: I mean, I hit recovery even being in that building, which I still think about to this day, and I just kind of shake my head. But both of the things happened at the same time. So we had moved into this building, and I had the tick bite about the same time. So it's like chicken or egg. Which one came first? Neither. They both came at the same time because that building literally had water issues from the first year that we moved in. So we moved in the springtime. By the summertime was the first time we had a rain event that it was raining back behind one of the walls, and it got wet back behind there and on the floor and the carpet and those types of things in one of the rooms. [00:41:28] Speaker C: So how did you figure out that? Did you get tested for mold? [00:41:33] Speaker D: What was it? So my Lyme doctor was like, well, we can do a urinalysis. Do you want to do that? And I was like, well, yeah, I want to be able to. Want to get rid of the rest of this. Like, whatever is going on, I want to fix it. And so I did. We did a urinalysis, and the levels were just ridiculous. The mycoflonic acid was 23,000. And I want to say the upper limit is, like, a couple hundred. And then the orthotoxin a was 27. And those were just the ones that were showing up that my body was actually excreting at that point in time. And it corresponded with some of the molds, the higher levels of some of the mold, the aspiralis and the penicillin molds that were really big. And at that point in time, my body wasn't even getting rid of the stacky or the other heavy ones that we had in the building. [00:42:33] Speaker B: It is. I agree with you, Tanya. I mean, it's amazing that you were able to do as well as you did, considering that, to me, is just fascinating. So now you found out the mold. So then that's kind of your second part of your journey. What did you do for that? How did you address that? I mean, obviously get out of the exposure, right. [00:43:02] Speaker D: We purged anything that couldn't be cleaned in 50 50. Ammonia and water. Anything that was porous got purged, and then we left the building. And then I started treatment, and that consisted of binders and then antifungals. I did a nasal spray, and then I did some stuff for my GI system in case there was colonization. I did probably about nine months, nine to ten months of mold. And then he was like, we need to retreat. And so I retreated lime and bartonella again after that. Now I don't know if I needed to or if it was just protocol to do it, but I did another nine to ten months of antibiotics after I finished the mold treatment. [00:43:58] Speaker B: And after that, then you're fine again. And you didn't have sensitivities. You still had the sensitivities to mold. Yeah. Your sensitivity when you're driving fast. [00:44:11] Speaker D: So that's still there. That's the one thing that is kind of still there. Myself, I will not drive myself on the highway. I can be a passenger, and it's okay at this point in time to be a passenger in a car at most speeds, but I'm not able to drive. It's almost like my brain can't take in the stimuli and process it, and I'm not really sure what it is or if it's permanent, but that's the one lingering thing I have. [00:44:46] Speaker C: And wasn't that kind of the only lingering thing that you had some weight issues? [00:44:51] Speaker D: I mean, I would love to be able to burn off some of the weight that I have, but that might just be an age issue. [00:44:57] Speaker C: Right. So after treated for mold, did you not feel any different? [00:45:02] Speaker D: I really didn't. [00:45:04] Speaker C: That is so. [00:45:05] Speaker D: I mean, interesting. I really didn't. So, I mean, I took all of the binders, and of course, I was rotating binders, and I had chlorostraline, and I had taken chlorostrylene as part of my Lyme stuff too early on, and then I had Gi detox, and I think there's even another one. And then I had something that was supposed to pull the gut lining. I had one of those as well. I didn't feel any different. I just did it because I knew that my body was so inundated with. [00:45:40] Speaker B: The mold and the mycotoxins and you retested and the numbers were better. [00:45:46] Speaker D: I did not actually retest. [00:45:48] Speaker B: Okay. [00:45:49] Speaker D: I did not. [00:45:51] Speaker B: It is interesting when you're treating Lyme and how you're losing weight during that treatment, because it is something that people don't recognize. Like, you're talking about your a one c being elevated, cholesterol being elevated, and all these things is that the toxins that these pathogens produce, they actually lock into the receptor sites on the cells. So the insulin then has a hard time to drive sugar into the cells. So you become then hyperglycemic. You become prediabetic or diabetic. So recognizing that impact of these pathogens, and that can be the same for thyroid hormone receptor sites, for hormone, other hormone receptor sites, it can be for any of that. So as you're treating and clearing that out, then you're able then to these hormones and these neurotransmitters become more effective. So it was fascinating how that was helping you with your weight. [00:47:00] Speaker C: Right. So crazy. I'm still just blown away that with the mold, that she felt great and she had mold, and then she treated and didn't feel any different. It's mind blowing. And that's why these podcasts are so great, is just because we get to hear so many different stories. There's not a one size fits all when you deal with lyme or co infections or mold or anything along those lines. Everybody is so different. So it's just nice to hear other people's journeys. And so it may be just that one little piece of information that someone shares, and the listener is like, light bulb. [00:47:49] Speaker D: And I can tell still, if I walk into a building that's got mold in, I can smell it, and that's still an issue. So, I mean, where I live in Houston, a lot of buildings get water damage, and it's a common phenomenon here. But if there's mold growing in it, I can definitely tell. [00:48:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:09] Speaker D: It's like the canary in the coal mine to me. [00:48:13] Speaker B: It's a superpower, because you really don't want to be in a place where you have mold. Sure. [00:48:19] Speaker D: Definitely not now. [00:48:20] Speaker B: No. So, kind of in closing. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Anything that. [00:48:27] Speaker B: You would like to say to yourself in the beginning of your journey that you wish I would have known what. [00:48:35] Speaker C: A bullseye rash was, we could have saved. I know. I had a 13 year journey. You had a ten year journey. We could have saved all those years had we just known what this stupid bullseye rash meant. Yeah, like, how do we not know, right? [00:48:51] Speaker D: If I had known it was so important to go to the doctor instead of just looking at it and being like. And admiring it. That's really cool. Have you ever seen anything like that? [00:48:59] Speaker C: Well, Andrea, if it makes you feel any better, I went to my primary doctor because it hurts so bad on my ankle. By the time I took a shower and got to work, I could hardly walk. So it may or may not have helped you. I know hindsight. My doctor looked at it and said, do you feel okay? I'm like, well, other than it hurts. Yeah, you're not sick. You don't have the flu. And I'm like, no. And he goes, well, if you feel weird in the next week or two, call me right away. And I was like, well, that's something really random for him to say, right? He knew. He knew it was a tick bite and decided not to inform me and didn't treat anyway. [00:49:41] Speaker D: That's crazy. Well, we don't have lime in Texas, so they probably wouldn't have done anything. [00:49:47] Speaker C: Don't. And I was in California, and there's no ticks in California. They all just colonize in Connecticut. They don't get outside of the. [00:49:58] Speaker D: Exactly. Exactly. [00:50:01] Speaker B: Well, Andrea, thank you so much. It's been great and sharing your journey. And it's always, like Tanya saying, it's always fascinating to hear the different nuances in people's journeys and how they do it and what happens. And there's so much that we learn, and I know the listeners learn from that. So thank you so much, Andrea. [00:50:23] Speaker C: Yes, thank you so much. We appreciate your time and sharing your story, and I'm so happy you have your life back and you know how to run. Yay. [00:50:34] Speaker D: Thank you, guys. [00:50:35] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:50:43] Speaker A: The information this podcast is for educational purposes only, and it's not designed to diagnose or treat any disease. I hope this podcast impacted you as it did me. Please subscribe so that you can be notified when new episodes are released. There are some excellent shows coming up that you do not want to miss. If you're enjoying these podcasts, please take a moment to write a review. And please don't keep this information to yourself. Share them with your family and friends. You never know what piece of information that will transform their lives. For past episodes and powerful information on how to conquer Lime, go to integrativelimesolutions.com and an additional powerful resource, lymestream.com. For Lyme support and group discussions, join Tanya on Facebook at Lyme Conquerors mentoring Lyme warriors. If you'd like to know more about the cutting edge integrative of Lyme therapies my center offers, please visit thecarlfellcenter.com. Thank you for spending this time with us, and I hope to see you at our next episode of Integrative Lyme Solutions with Dr. Carlfeld.