[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 to what's going on today. The information is impact, so, yeah, don't step away.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: So excited. Let's go ahead and get this started.
Welcome to Integrative Lyme Solutions with Dr. Carl felt. And today we are joined by our guest, Shelly, who is in a little trauma turmoil at the moment, which she will share during her story. But we appreciate you kind of taking a break from life at the moment and joining us and taking us down your journey with you. So welcome.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: Thank you. My pleasure. And thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.
[00:01:05] Speaker D: Well, we're going to hear about your story, but I know mold, in addition to what you've dealt with, is not a good thing. And now you're paddling canoes downstairs.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Luckily, we got this right away, so the mold is pretty minimal, and the remunation company has been right on top of it. So that's great. The previous time, it was a hidden water leak, and so we think that water had actually been flowing, unbeknownst to me, for probably several months to maybe more than a year. And so when the hardwood. I don't have a basement, I just have a concrete slab. And so when the hardwood actually literally peeled itself off the concrete slab because there was so much water pulling, there was about an inch of water on the slab that a friend and I just took crowbars and started ripping up my hardwood floors in my house and looked underneath, and the entire half of the house was nothing but black mold, which explained why I was very sick after. At that point. What was that? Two years of treating for three different tick borne diseases. So pretty brutal, because I think most of us who've been through this know that mold is really damaging, and it just makes it so much harder when you're dealing with Lyme and other tick bone diseases.
[00:02:24] Speaker D: Yeah. And there are a lot of kind of strategies when you go after Lyme. A lot of times you go after mold first. Like mold, Bartonella tend to be kind of the first two that you look for, and here you got mold all over and trying to get well from lime.
[00:02:43] Speaker C: It's interesting that you say that, because I only discovered the hidden water damage in what was May of 2021, when my hardwood floors just rupted off the foundation.
But when I nearly died from Lyme in the fall of 2019 and November 2019, when I sought treatment, I got a diagnosis of Lyme, Bartonella babesia, and I did test positive for Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but it was an igg antibody, so hopefully passed infection. But they also tested me for mold, and it was really interesting because here we can't test. We have to send our test to one of a couple of labs in the US. So sent that off, and when I got the report back, I tested positive for. I can't remember the exact ones because, of course, I have Lyme brain at this point, my memory shot, but it was four different molds, and certainly okratoxin. I think for all four molds, my infection load, or mycotoxin load, was in the 97th percentile. So I was absolutely loaded with mold. And so my new water treatment tank had gone in trying to think. Now I want to say, like, when would it have been? Early 2019?
Yeah, I think that's it. And we think that's probably when the water damage started. So it probably means I'd had several months of mold, exposure to black mold and all kinds of things at that point. So it made me pretty sick. And I remember I could barely walk, and I honestly did not. I figured the wheelchair was next, and I didn't think I'd be alive in six to eight months, and so if I didn't get treatment. And I remember when I finally went to a private doctor in Toronto, because our public health care system here doesn't recognize chronic Lyme's real disease, and we're denied access to health care, even though this is Canada.
And I remember my functional medical doctor that I was paying out of pocket for in Toronto said, look, you're loaded with mold. We have to treat this first. And I just kept saying to him, I'm sick. I want antibiotics, right? And he's like, no, you don't understand. We have to get rid of the mold first because it's such a potent immunosuppressor.
And as a research scientist, former research scientist, I just started reading about this. I'm like, oh, now I get it.
Quite the education.
[00:05:00] Speaker D: Yeah. Okay.
You put in the water treatment prior to the mold test. Is that what I'm hearing? Or did you have already loaded with mold and then you got more mold?
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Well, that's a really good question. We're not entirely sure. When I was a graduate student in the early 1990s at University of Toronto, I lived in student housing there, and I just remember taking shoes out of my closet and they were fuzzy. They were so covered with whatever mildew, mold, whatever Toronto used to be.
Not the case in Toronto. Much more humid, as we know, even exposure.
[00:05:50] Speaker D: Shelley, Shelley, you cut out a little bit. Do you mind kind of saying exactly again, kind of telling you what? You took out the shoes from the closet and can I start from there?
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Yeah, no worries. Apologies. Let me know if I do cut it. I'm on rural Internet, so it's a little dodgy.
Yeah. So when I was a student in the early 1990s at University of Toronto, I remember opening up my closet and seeing my hiking boots and shoes and a bunch of things just covered in fuzz. So some sort of mold checked most of them out. But even though Toronto is only about 5 hours, it is a rather different climate and it's much more humid there. And student housing. Right. A lot of us get exposed when we're living in maybe not so great housing as students or other circumstances in our lives. And as we know, we can even, especially those of us who say aren't good at detoxing and that sort of thing, or may have a genetic predisposition to not being able to clear mycotoxins, we can hold those things for a long time. And then when you're unknown, but living in a house that's full of mold for several months.
Yeah, it just hammered my system and made me really sick. And then, as you know, a lot harder to treat the other two point diseases.
[00:07:11] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.
When you're young, you can usually handle a lot. So it could have been going to college exposed to mold, but your immune system and your system was strong enough so you're able to handle it, but it doesn't mean that it's not putting stress on your system as a whole. So then when you then add the tick borne to it, then system goes down.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: That's right. Exactly. And especially, I mean, thinking about when you're a graduate student, any kind of student, you're under more stress. You're probably not having the best diet because you don't have money for food.
Really, when you think of it, it's kind of the perfect storm. Even though you're young and your immune system is hopefully healthier.
I really admire how Dr. Bill Rawls describes it as the pot boiling. You know, our bodies can handle a certain infection load, whether know molds, know Epstein Barr virus and all of these things that our bodies get bombarded with just over the course of our lives and that we can tolerate a certain infection load. But then you get to the point whether it's either too much or your immune system gets stressed or you have an accident or physical injury, and that's enough to just let the pot boil over. And that sure happened to me in 2019 with the tick bite.
[00:08:30] Speaker D: Tell me about that 2018. You just felt fine. Everything was perfect. And then did you have a fiscal tick bite that you saw?
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated than I was. I mean, it's funny kind of how hindsight is 2020, right?
So I live rurally, I'm 15 acres of forested land in eastern Ontario, and so my backyard is just surrounded by forest, and it's a beaver pond as well, so very natural area. And I was sitting on my porch in the summer of 2015, and all summer long, I'm just in sandals, shorts, and t shirts. That's it.
And I'm outside.
I'm a biologist, and I love gardening, landscaping instead of. So I'm constantly outside as soon as the weather is good, shorts and a t shirt. So I was sitting on my porch, and I noticed this oval, raised kind of red spot, fairly large, a couple of inches long, and maybe about an inch wide or something. And I went, oh, boy.
Back in 2015, had never seen a tick on my property. And I was like, oh, jeez, is that a tick bite? And so I got online and I went, oh, no, not a problem. It's not a bullseye. I'm fine. Must be spider bite. So. Ignored it. Now I'm educated. Now, I know that that was a tick bite, most likely. And it was interesting because in 2015, like, just a couple of months before that, I'd gone through divorce. And prior to that, every year from 2009 until 2021, I went through major life Cris. So, mother getting ill on life support twice, then passing away a few months later. Father ill, he passes away, divorce, settling my dad's estate, those sorts of things, other family conflict. And it was just literally, like, one thing after another major life crisis. And in 2009, when all this started, just before it, I had actually done a career switch from becoming. I had been a university research scientist, and I moved back to Canada from New Zealand, because I'd been in New Zealand for six years as a research scientist. So it was basically career switch, international move. Got home three months later. My mom was on life support, and it was just one thing after another. So you can imagine the stress that puts on your immune system. And so in 2015, when I had that bite, I was already really stressed and burnt out, and I didn't think anything of it. And as I say, I kind of trusted our medical system to tell me, oh, this isn't a tick bite, because it's not a bullseye. Now, we know that bullseyes occur in, what, 10% or fewer cases of tick bites. And just to let you know, I've had, unfortunately, multiple tick bites since 2015, and the only time I ever had any rash was that one bite in 2015.
I basically just don't get rashes from tick bites at all. So, anyway, so I ignored it and just started feeling really lousy over the course of kind of a year or so. And interestingly, this was about early 2016. I started to lose my eyesight from cataracts, and I had just turned, what? 51? I'm like, how do you lose your eyesight from cataracts at that young age? And they developed probably, well, one of them within about four months, the other within six months, and then I was legally blind. Wow. And so I had to have cataract surgery to get my sight back.
And then, yeah, I just got worse and worse, sicker and sicker.
I remember my GP saying, oh, it's just burnout. You've been through hell. You've had a life crisis every year.
This is a lot for anybody to handle, and you're perimenopausal. So put all those things together, it's perfect storm, right? And thought, okay, I trusted that and got sicker and sicker and sicker. And then in spring of 2018, I had a concussion. So I had a bit of years worth of post concussion symptoms to deal with, which was just brutal. And then in exactly a year later, April of 2019, in the shower, discover a fully engorged, pea sized tick on my back. And, of course, when you live on your own, you don't see them when they're on your back, right? Well, I do now. They have a full length of mirror in my bathroom, and I recommend that for everybody. But I had not seen a tick in my backyard until I think it was.
And after that, it looked like somebody had airdropped a million ticks into my backyard, but up to that point, had not seen a single tick.
[00:13:14] Speaker D: I wonder what changed.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: That is so crazy.
[00:13:17] Speaker C: I think I know what it is, and I think it's my knowledge as a biologist, that's the clue. So, because I live rurally, and as you say, I basically have a home in the middle of the forest, essentially, even though my backyard is a little bit clear, there are a lot of oak trees in the backyard, and it was kind of around the 2016 17 or so it was a mast year for the oak trees, so there were a gazillion acorns on the ground. And of course, when you have more acorns, you have more squirrels and chipmunks and mice and all of those little critters that are vectors for ticks and their tick borne diseases. And so I think what I was seeing is that there was a peak in the number of acorns produced by the trees, and then within about a year to two years after that, there was a peak in the small mammal population, and that's when the ticks came in.
[00:14:08] Speaker D: Fascinating.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: Interesting, yeah.
[00:14:13] Speaker D: And that's so interesting is that with nature, how it changes and kind of understanding the cycles and the impact of these infectious agents.
So you saw that engorged in your back. How did you remove it?
[00:14:30] Speaker C: So I ended up, as I say, I was on my own, and I kind of looked at it and freaked it and went, okay, calm down. Now what? Right? So what do you do? You phone a friend. Well, she says, I met a town. I'm like, oh, darn. Okay. So I just took a deep breath and I went, okay, so I could go to my neighbor. I could go to neighbor the other way because I live rurally. I'm kind of an hour from everything aside from two small towns. And I just thought, I want this thing off right away. So I drove to my local hospital, which is about 20 minutes away, and typical biologists, I show up with a little glass vial, right? And I say, get this thing off me, please, as soon as possible. But when you do, can you put it in the glass vial? Because I want to get this tested to see if it has Lyme disease. So they took the tick off, and I handed them the glass vial, they put the tick in it, and I said, could you please get this tested through our public health system? And they said, no, we can't do it. Well, that's a lie. They can do it. They just choose not to spend the money.
Um, and back then, I didn't know know private tick testing services, so I ended up just giving it to the local veterinarian. They will not give you test results, but they were actually involved in an Ontario wide. So I'm in the province of Ontario, an Ontario wide surveillance program with veterinary clinics where any ticks that were coming off cats and dogs and farm animals, that they would actually submit them just so they could actually try to understand through molecular genetics what was the prevalence of Lyme in animals in eastern Ontario. And I guess presumably using that as a bit of a proxy for infection rates for humans. I mean, we know there have been studies to do that. I don't think that was their intent, so I gave it to them, which means I couldn't get any results myself.
And when I was at the hospital, the ER doctor said to me, oh, here's two pills. This is doxycycline. It's an antibiotic. Take these two pills, and you'll be just fine. So I trusted my medical system. Well, three days later, I became really ill with flulike symptoms. And I didn't connect the dots, really, at that point. I just thought, I'm really burnt out. I'm really exhausted.
I ended up getting a cold shortly. I went through about a week of flu like symptoms and just thought, and this is April, so you can still have kind of end of winter season flu sort of thing. So I thought, okay, I must just be really burnt out, run down, and have got the flu. So I recovered from that, it seemed. And then I ended up getting a cold, so kind of head cold. So a couple of weeks with that, and then after that, seasonal allergy started, and I hadn't had bad seasonal allergies since I was a kid. And I was like, what is going on? My immune system is just shot. I know it's been a really stressful several years, but this is crazy. Anyways, I just kind of ignored it, thought it was getting better. And then by about, I guess, kind of mid may or so, I woke up one morning and I couldn't get out of bed because I felt like my entire body had been run over by a fully loaded cement truck. My joints were screaming at me. I had nausea, I had a really bad headache. Fatigue was so bad, I couldn't get out of bed.
I felt like death wormed over. And I was just like, what is going on? And it was at that point, I was starting to kind of go, is this Lyme disease? And then I reached out to a couple of friends who were battling, who were under treatment for Lyme, bartonellum babesia. So our wonderful sort of hat trick of tick borne diseases like shell. I hate to tell you this, but I think you have Lyme. And it's like, okay, this is weird. So I had a couple of days off work, and I kind of kept an eye on it, but I sort of shrugged it a little bit aside, okay. For a couple of days, and then I woke up a few days later, and I couldn't move. And I was so sick, and I just thought, I feel like I'm dying. And I'm not like an overly dramatic person, but I was like, yeah, I really feel like I'm dying at this point. And I also had really bad ear hunger. I just could not full breath, and it was starting to get a little bit panicky and the fatigue and the fever and all of this stuff going on. And so I kind of reached back out to some friends who were under treatment for Lyme and other tick borne diseases or had had family members that have been through this. And so I started listening to them and their symptoms, and I'm like, oh. So, of course, as a former research scientist, I get onto the Internet and start looking at sources of peer reviewed science and of course, at know, I look at the CDC and that sort of thing, and of course, now I know what are the sources to look at and which aren't. But anyways, I just started to read and kind of went, oh, my goodness, this is Lyme disease. And probably also the bcosin.
[00:19:11] Speaker D: I was curious, why did you kind of go for Lyme? I know you dealt with ticks and things. I mean, was just mind on your Lyme, on your radar because of your friend.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think at that point, that was the tick bite in 2019. So the fact that I'd had a tick, fully engorged tick removed from my back, three days later, I get sick with flu like symptoms, kind of shrug it off, then I get this cold, then I get these allergies, and then I'm flattened, and then I'm going, okay, this is not a cold. This is not allergies.
This isn't even the flu like symptoms at this point. This is just death warmed over. And it wasn't until I started talking to people who were suffering from these same infections. And it's like, yes, check.
And you're just going, okay, this sounds a little too coincidental. As a scientist, I'm a skeptic, but I try to look at things objectively, but then I'm just thinking, hang on a second. They say three to 30 days. I got sick three days later. Here we are roughly 30 days later, and I can't even move. And I just feel like death warmed over. So I kind of started reading, put two and two together. One of the things that my friend had said to me, which was really smart advice, was she said, this is when I first kind of had those flu like symptoms three days after having the tick removed at the hospital. And she said, keep a symptom diary. She said, write down on the calendar the date of your tick bite. And every day, I want you to write down what your symptoms are, because if this is Lyme disease, you're probably going to have new things pop up over time. Your joint pain will be migratory, it won't be in the same place. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. And, yeah, all the symptoms started popping up. And it literally, at that point, was just the likelihood of this being something else just seemed too remote. And obviously, there was no guarantee at that point, but it wasn't just a coincidence. And I thought, at this point, we need to start looking at Lyme because, yeah, everything's pointing to it.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: So the two pills that the doctor gave you to get rid of it, kind of eventually you figured out that went out the window. That wasn't the true story.
[00:21:18] Speaker C: Exactly. So, as I say, I'm much more educated now and understand that those two pills are pretty much useless. And I think the thing that particularly bothers me as a scientist is that there is actually no credible science behind that policy, that treatment policy. And so how on earth can our healthcare systems promote that when there's no science behind it?
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Well, was it not very long ago, Dr. K, we had somebody on here that said, I think they got one pill, because for many years of different things that I've read, it's been like ten days of doxycycline or sometimes 21. So I don't even know when or where this one or two pill thing started popping in here.
[00:22:01] Speaker C: It's not helpful, that's for sure.
It's unfortunate. And I think, even though I'm a research scientist, I mean, I'm not a medical doctor and had not dealt with Lyme before, but I put my trust in our medical system, and I would say up until recently here in Canada, we've always had a pretty darn good healthcare system. I mean, I lived in the US for several years. I did my phd down in the US, and then I lived in New Zealand. I was a research scientist in New Zealand for six years. And New Zealand has a kind of a hybrid two tier system, where you have both public and private, and you have an option, which unfortunately boils down to, if you have a very thick wallet, then you get your treatment tomorrow, but if you go through the public system, you wait for eight know. So, in Canada, we've always had a good system, and I trusted.
I. I really hate to say this, but I have very little trust in our medical system anymore, at least our.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Publicly funded one, and I don't. In the states, I still believe and I will always say there's a time and place for everything, right?
And I don't have a cold, everyone, I apologize, you know, but somehow Vegas took my voice the other day.
But, I mean, I get a cold, or either, you know, dig in my own cabinet for stuff, or I go see K. Like, there's no regular, traditional primary doctor I go to.
When they give you wrong information year after year, you absolutely lose faith in them.
[00:23:31] Speaker C: Exactly. I totally get even my GP at the time. I had to battle to get her to give me a couple of doses of doxycycline. I mean, she just could not believe that this was Lyme. And she did do a couple of Lyme tests under public health, which is the two tier system, so the Eliza. But what's only followed by a western blot if the Eliza is positive? And we know that the Eliza, those two tests, is the poorer one that lacks sensitivity, so you're less likely to get a positive from the Eliza. So they basically start with a lousy test, and then they'll only give you a good test, the better test, if the first one's positive. So complete reverse logic. I mean, there is no logic to it. And we now know how poor that two tier testing is. I mean, if you look at the research papers, the published science on this, they say even if you actually do have a Lyme infection, the probability on average that it will detect it is about 50%. It's a coin toss. And we know that at certain stages in Lyme, and especially chronic Lyme, it will miss about 70% to 80% of the cases of Lyme. So that test is useless. And one of the things that really bothered me as I started to kind of get into this Lyme journey or nightmare or whatever you want to call it, and as I say, as a scientist, literally, like, gobling up as much scientific research as I could to understand these diseases. There was a bulletin produced by Health Canada, so our federal government's health agency in 2012, and it was a bulletin for all medical doctors in Canada, I think it was called the adverse reaction medical bulletin or something like that. And the very first article on the first page was about Lyme disease testing. And so even our federal government here in Canada said, do a clinical diagnosis. Do not use the two tiered testing for diagnosis, because the test lacks sensitivity and the false negative rate is pretty bad. And yet, almost every doctor that I went to, and every case of folks that I know in Canada, for the most part, under public health, they use the test as a diagnostic tool. And it was never meant for that, wasn't designed for.
[00:25:54] Speaker D: Mean. You know, in your heart of hearts, that is Lyme. But it tested negative on the Lysi. Take it.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: Yeah, on the Elysa.
[00:26:03] Speaker D: That's right.
What were your next steps then?
Did you test further, or you just assumed, symptomatically that I have Lyme because of the scenario?
[00:26:15] Speaker C: Right.
I guess by some point, maybe kind of end of may or so, I had already had a couple of different Lyme tests, two tests, I think, under public health, both of them were negative. But, oh, my goodness, I was just getting sicker and sicker. And so I had gone to my GP and I said, look, I think that was my third visit to her in maybe a month. And I said, I am so sick, and I've done all the reading. I'm pretty certain this is Lyme disease. And I said, let's just use common sense here. So I was bitten by a tick, had a fully engorged tick that was probably on me for at least a week, pulled off my back. Three days later, I get sick. And then they're telling me it's not Lyme disease. And I'm thinking, I don't know. Let's look at some logic here, right?
Anyway, so my doctor said. She says, no, she says it's got to be rheumatoid arthritis. And I'm like, I don't think so. But I said to her, look, you can test me for whatever you want. Just please give me some doxycycline for the line. And she said, well, let's do some testing. And I said, okay, do some testing. Of course, all the rheumatoid factors came back negative. And she tested again and again. And I finally went back to her, even sicker, and I said, that's it. I said, I want oxycycline. I'm not leaving till I get any.
And she had said to me, well, you've had two Lyme tests and they're negative. So I actually showed up in her office with about eight inches of scientific papers that I'd printed off describing why you can still have Lyme disease, but test negative.
So I said, do you want to go through each one one at a time, or do you want me to give you, like, the synopsis? So she opted for the synopsis. And so I gave her the synopsis, and she looked at me, she said, you know way more about this than I do. So she said, I'm going to trust you. And so she gave me six weeks of doxycycline sorry, three weeks of doxycycline. Immediately I started to feel better. I was just like, oh my goodness, what a difference. And I was actually running a field course for an environmental field course for high school students at the time. I thought, I actually need to be functional for this.
A bunch of teenagers around the woods, so had just finished the doxycycline by the end of that course, and then I started to feel lazy again and the babesia symptoms were getting worse. And when I had gone to my gp to talk about to get the doxycycline and showing up in our office to explain how you can get false negatives, I said, well, she gave me the three weeks of doxycycline. I said, what about the babesiosis? And she said, babesio what?
And I thought, uhoh. So I went back again and she had done some blood tests. She says, well, you don't have hemolytic anemia. And I said, well, I hope I don't, because the whole idea is to catch Babesia before you get that sick, right? And so I said, I don't think that's the diagnostic test for babesiosis, but whatever. So a friend of mine said, you've got to go to a naturopath. So I went to a naturopath about an hour away and she said, based on your symptoms, Lyme, bartonella, babesia, here's some tinctures. And she said, by the way, she says everything that you have told me about your lifestyle, your kind of history from childhood on up and your symptoms. She says you actually have chronic Lyme. You've had this for quite a while. You didn't just get bitten a few months ago and get Lyme. She said, these are symptoms of chronic Lyme. And I'm like, uhoh. So of course I'd start doing some reading to understand about chronic Lyme. She said, you really need to go back to your GP and get three more weeks of doxycycline.
So I did, and my GP said no. And I said yes. And we kind of duked it out. And I said to her, look, I said, how can you explain that? You gave me three weeks of doxycycline and all of a sudden I feel immensely better. Doesn't that tell you something? And she's like, yeah, anyways, I think because I knew more about this than her, she actually conceded to give me the other three weeks of doxycycline. So I took that and felt much, much better. But the problem was, as soon as that six weeks of doxy was done, you're cut off in Canada, you are not allowed access to any more doxycycline under public health. And I find this, I'll be honest, truly, deeply offensive, because if you are a teenager in Canada with really bad acne and your prom is coming up in a couple of months, you can actually get four months of doxycycline from your GP to clear up your acne for prom. But can you get four months of doxycycline to try to stay alive because you've got tick borne illnesses? Absolutely not. And I actually know somebody friend of mine whose daughter has severe acne and she's been on doxycycline for seven years, and yet here, six weeks, you're cut off. So at the end of those six weeks, I got immensely sick, and at that point, I did not think I was going to be alive in several months.
[00:31:00] Speaker D: No, it is such hypocrisy and not hippocratic.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:16] Speaker D: That they're holding on to the doxycycline so hard when it's really needed for something severe. And here, just for acne, they're just willing to pour it on. And for, you have these young teenagers, and here, just take this, and they're passing it out as candy. But if it's something that's beneficial and really can help you, then, no, I.
[00:31:42] Speaker C: Think it speaks to the underlying politics behind all of it, because it's a massive double standard that has no explanation. And the part that really gets me is you talk to doctors who practice under the IDSA guidelines for the Infectious Disease Society of America, which are the guidelines that are, frankly, are not based on science. Right. The iLAd guidelines are much, much better and are based on science for the most know, you look at this and you just kind of shake your know with this double standard and you have doctors coming to you saying, well, no, we can't give you more doxycycline for Lyme disease because antibiotic resistance is becoming really severe and this is a danger. And I'm thinking, well, if it's a danger, why on earth is a pimpley teen on doxy for seven years? Are you kidding me? Like, I'm sorry, but that argument just doesn't wash. And it's interesting because one of the things that I have, because I have such an inquiring mind and I'm a bit of a pit bull when it comes to sort of situations like this, I sink my teeth in and I don't let go. And the list of double standards when it comes to Lyme and how other medical conditions are treated or viewed is phenomenal. You write the list of double standards on toilet paper because it's so long, it's wild and it's so blatant. How on earth can our medical system deny these absolutely blatant double standards? Like, look at how you treat tuberculosis, right? Multiple doses, potentially over years, with more than one antibiotic. But that's okay?
[00:33:15] Speaker D: Yeah, that's perfectly fine, yeah.
It's so od. It's so od.
Obviously, you didn't get further with your GP, so how did you take the next step?
[00:33:31] Speaker C: So I did work with my GP quite a bit after that.
Again, this was after the six weeks of doxycycline, but I was having trouble, I was having heart palpitations, I was having trouble breathing, I was having horrible night sweats, all these sorts of things. Well, of course, the night sweats. Oh, you're approaching menopause. That must be it. Right?
So she actually ran me through an entire battery of cardiac tests just to make sure that my heart was functioning, because, of course, I didn't say this to her, but I'm sort of thinking about Lyme carditis and just wanting to be careful. And she could see that I was really sick, so she said, yes, I want to run you through a gamut of tests. So she did that and everything came up negative, even though I could barely walk because I was so out of breath. And she could see that I was really sick. I mean, I'd be sitting in her office and she'd just be looking at me going, you're really sick, but I have no clue what's going on. And I kept telling her, Lyme diseaseiosis, and I did ask for more antibiotics and we never talked about the elephant in the room, but basically, it was just like, no, she was a wonderful GP, a wonderful human being, and I don't fault her. She's part of a system that, frankly, is corrupt. But she never said it. But she would not give me any more doxycycline. And I'm sure the lawyers in her practice had said, don't go there, right? Because otherwise, I think it's in. Well, it is the same in the US, at least, circumstances. But we have cases of doctors here in Canada that have been forced into early retirement because they were treating according to the iLad's guidelines, and they were basically told, either retire early or we're going to revoke your license to practice medicine and we're going to shut, you mean. You know, I've personally spoken to doctors in this country that have been in that position and have retired early just for that reason. So I'm sure she was put in that position by the medical system and the medical regulatory board that do not give this woman any more doxycycline.
So just kind of let it go. And I kept kind of treating with a few tinctures that I'd gotten from the naturopath, but I just kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And I got to the point kind of midsummer, I guess it was, or, no, it'd be August, I guess, late summer. I was so sick, I could barely stand up. And so, actually, I was so sick and so out of breath that I went back to my local er and could barely get in the door.
Your doctor says, what are you here for? And so I explained the whole story to him, and he can see that I can't even stand up at that point. I have to sit down to tell him the story. I can barely get the words out because I can't breathe.
And I said, I need more doxycycline. I need treatment. I need something because I feel like I am dying at this point. And he got really angry with me, and he kind of folds his arms after I told him about the six weeks of doxy and that I wanted more. And he looks at me and he yells, well, what do you want me to do about it? And I thought, oh, boy, you picked the wrong person to mess with. And so I looked at him and I kind of mirrored his body language, and I said, yeah, well, I'm the one who's sick here and being denied access to treatment from our medical system, and what do you expect me to do it? And I yelled at him, and he kind of went like this, and I thought, if you're going to be disrespectful to me, I'm going to mirror the same behavior back to you, so don't you dare. And it's hard to do when you're really sick and you can hardly stand up. But I'm not taking this crap from anybody. Pardon me if you need to edit that out, but it really upset me because I thought, I don't care why you go in to see a doctor. You should be treated with respect. That's a given. And yet, we know as Lyme patients, we're gaslighted and verbally abused and emotionally abused. And I just find that one of the most appalling, offensive things to think that any medical professional would treat another human being in that way, especially when they walk into the sick. So after I yelled back at him, he kind of like jolted him and he took me more seriously. He says, well, have a seat, we'll run some tests. And I said, so let's see, you're going to do CBC and you're going to do chest x rays and a urine test. I said, I had all that done about two and a three weeks ago. I can tell you exactly what the results will be. And he says, well, let's do the test. I'm like, okay, I will never turn down medical care, right? So I said, okay, I'll sit tight. So I had a nap, comes back a couple of hours later. He's like, well, your tests are normal. I'm like, didn't I tell you that? He's like, okay. So he says, I'm not sure there's much more I can do for you. Even though I'm just about, I can barely walk at this point. He says to me, he says, the only thing I can think of, he says, we have an internist. And remembering this is a small town of 6000 people, right? 7000 people, small town. He says, we have an internist in town. Would you like me to refer him to you or you to him because he may be able to help? And I said, yes, please. He says, okay. So I wait, and I wait and I wait. And there's no appointment, no referral. And then finally about a month later, I get a phone call from this internist doctor's office. And the admin assistant says to me, so why are you coming in for an appointment? And I said, oh, Lyme disease. And it's like, have a nice day.
Wouldn't even open the door to me.
So at that point I was kind of like, well, I'm out of options. And I just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And so by about Labor Day, so early September, the neurological symptoms started to kick in. I had such high pressure feelings in my head, I thought, this is not possible. But it felt like brains were going to ooze out through my ears.
I started to get facial numbness. I got numbness in my arms.
I'm a pretty chill person. But I remember sitting on my porch just before Labor Day in tears, sobbing because I was panicked because I thought, I'm going to die here and nobody's going to know it. And that's how I felt. I thought, I'm going to have a stroke or this is it. And so really good friend of mine said to me, you're not staying home alone. So she picked me up, took me to her place, and she says, you're staying with me for the long weekend, Labor Day weekend, and let's figure this out. And so it was at that point, up to that point, I had reached out. I had called Lyme literate doctors in upstate New York across the border.
They don't even answer their phones. I mean, you leave them a message, but they have six month waiting lists. I thought, I'm going to be dead in six months. So I just kept phoning and phoning and phoning, and somebody eventually told me about this private functional medicine doctor in Toronto who was Lyme literate and very good. So I contacted them, and of course, you can't speak to human being. You just get a voicemail. I think I sent about eight emails and eight voicemails, and I was getting so sick by kind of the week after Labor Day, I left a voicemail to their clinic, and I was sobbing, and I said, I am dying and I am not going to make it till Christmas time, so please, please help me. And so they called me and they said, look, it's usually about three months until we can see you. I said, well, I'm probably going to be dead by then, at the very least in a wheelchair and not functional, which is pretty bad when you're living on your own and you're trying to work to pay your mortgage and that sort of thing. So it was not looking good. So they were really great. They got me in, in about three weeks. So I had to drive to Toronto, which is about 4 hours away from here, and a friend very kindly drove me. And you got the process started and eventually started to get on treatment, and that saved my life.
[00:40:46] Speaker D: And what did the treatment look like.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: Initially? Obviously, the first thing was just to do the diagnoses right, and obviously clinical diagnosis, do the blood tests and just see what comes.
I had, I knew I was going to get into the clinic, but I was just so desperate for help and to understand what was going on that I decided to send my own blood to Armin labs in Germany for some testing. And frankly, guessing which tests I needed, I mean, I probably tested too much. I ordered about $2,200 worth of testing.
Went through a nightmare there, because without a doctor's requisition, you're not allowed to get your own blood out of your own body. And no doctor would give me a requisition for the test. My GP refused to give me a requisition to access my own blood so that I could pay to send my own blood for private testing in Germany, they would not do that. I went to a bunch of doctors, I went to naturopaths. Nobody would do it.
And I'm not going to give you any more details, except to say that I encountered somebody who was very kind, who bent the rules and allowed me to get it done.
And so I did get testing done just before I got into the clinic. So by the time I met with the Lyme literate private functional medicine doctor, I had the armin test results. This doctor also did testing through public health, and then we did sort of the urine testing for mold and that sort of thing. But because I'd already ordered the Armin test and had the results, we used some of that as well.
So that was the beginning of treatment, a very aggressive treatment. So, obviously, first to treat the mold. And I kept saying to him, I want the antibiotics. And he's like, you don't understand. You're so sick. Even if I give you the antibiotics, your body is in no condition to metabolize those and use them. So I can give you a full dose of antibiotics, but your body might only be using 10% of it, and that's not going to do anything. He says, we need to get you better. We need to get rid of the mold, we need to boost your immune system, we need to reduce the systemic inflammation and just build up your general wellness while we get rid of the mold.
And so kind of being so panicked and feeling so close to not being around, it's not really the news you want to hear. But I understand completely now that he was right. And I trusted him, because I really had no other option. And he's a very good doctor, and I do trust him.
And so that's what began. And then I think at one point, I was probably taking about 80 pills a day. So between prescription meds, mostly supplements, so mostly, obviously, botanicals, I think this is an interesting thing that probably a lot of Lyme and tick borne disease patients go through. So as a biologist, as a research scientist, I'm being prescribed all of these herbal supplements and kind of going.
So I know that most of our prescription drugs come from nature, right? They are molecules from plants and sea creatures and all kinds of things. Those molecules get tweaked, and so then we end up with synthetic drugs, but most of these things come from nature originally and these molecules. And when I was a kid, I was always really interested in indigenous, traditional knowledge. So that part of me was also like, well, if indigenous people could chew on willow and get salicylic acid that way, what's to say that botanicals from a supplement store don't work as long as they're high quality products?
So I trusted, and I have to say, it was kind of more, well, I don't really have a choice, so let's go down this road.
And I have to say that I was so impressed with the performance of botanicals, and I'm not saying there isn't a place and a time for prescription drugs. There absolutely is. I mean, many of them are life saving, but people have to understand that these are very potent drugs and with often severe side effects of toxic. Essentially, they're meant to be sledgehammers, right? Not everything needs a sledgehammer. And so I realized, especially with these tick borne diseases and the mold, that it's very much a long term process of treating these things and trying to kind of almost sort of whittle away at the infection burden and the damage that it's done. And I think botanicals supplements do that extremely well. And so here I am. What are we kind of going on five years later or whatever? And I only take prescription drugs as absolutely needed because I know we have some really great tools.
[00:45:21] Speaker D: And so the botanicals, what did that look like? Like the common cat's claw.
[00:45:28] Speaker C: Yeah, cat's claw. So artemisia fulvic acid, there was everything.
I was on some prescription antifungals and nasal sprays and that sort of thing. Nice statin. But then I think for most of the Lyme and the bartonella and the babesia, so I did not test positive for Lyme under public health. I tested positive for bartonella and babesia. Test pretty poor, so nothing there, although all the symptoms. And then also tested positive for Rockyman and spotted fever.
So basically, the diagnosis was Lyme, bartonella, babesia, and past infection, Rockyman, spotted fever, and the mold. So it was the full spectrum. It was everything to try to kill the infections, boost my immune system, reduce the systemic inflammation, just really try to literally, like, rebuilding your basic health is almost what has to happen when you're that sick from chronic tick bone illnesses. And it's very much like a slow stepwise process, and I'm not a very patient person, so I was just like, oh, come on. But you really realize when you fully understand what you're actually trying to accomplish with treatment of chronic tick borne illnesses, you realize it's very much like peeling an onion, right? There's all these layers that you have to get back, and that takes time.
And then supplements would change over time. Okay, you're getting better here, so we're going to kind of wean you off this, but we're going to put you on another one. So we want some biofilm busters, for example, those sorts of things.
I think lime was actually kind of the third thing that we treated. I think the first things that they went after were certainly the mold, and then it was the babesia, because that was really acute, and then it was kind of the bartonella and then the lime, which kind of surprised me. But now I understand the process and I understand the logic behind it and fully support it at that point, I was just learning because it was all new to me.
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't think you have to be impatient when you go years and you finally get a diagnosis and you have somebody that wants to treat you, because we do. And there's a lot of people out there that can't afford any type of help from doctors or nature paths. And they go on Amazon and order supplements. They just want to kill.
[00:47:50] Speaker C: Kill.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Like, it makes sense, right? We just want it out of our body. But, yes, it's absolutely like an onion. So what do you think your worst symptoms came from? Do you think it was mold?
[00:48:04] Speaker C: Certainly initially, the mold, I think, did a lot of harm. And I think the big things for me is because many of the mycotoxins from molds are such potent immunosuppressors. Right. So we know that I can't remember the name of the actual compound. You guys could probably remember this. And here's a great case. Here's my lime brain, right? My short term memory is shot. My chronic symptoms are mostly cognitive, along with GI issues and fatigue. Those are kind of an occasional migratory joint pain, but the cognitive and psychiatric issues, kind of the worst.
So trying to remember these things, but, yeah, some of the compounds, I think, from these mycotoxins are actually isolated as drugs to suppress the immune system, and they're given to patients who receive organ donation so that they won't reject their organ. That's how potent these things are as immunosuppressors. So it was very much getting the mycotoxins out, and I think that was a lot of my symptoms, but then I had bartonella. That's really nasty.
It's hard to say. There's so much overlap, too, in the symptoms from these things we often talk about. Okay, well, night sweats is babesia, but bartonella can cause it. Lyme can cause it.
It's tough. And, I mean, I think that is part of the challenge with diagnosis. And why you need to go to a doctor who's a specialist and who's Lyme literate is because there is so much overlap in these symptoms. And as you're trying to kind of peel that onion and figure out what's worse here, what do we treat first?
And trying to figure that out, one of the challenges for me, too, was that even though I'd only had that tick bite in April of 2019, they're pretty certain that I'd probably had Lyme since I was a kid. So I had three autoimmune diseases. First one hit when I was 26, second one when I was 27, third one when I was 41.
And I literally have spent my entire childhood outside. I spent my youth outside. I was a field biologist for 25 years, even after I did a career switch and left academia. I'm landscaping, I'm hiking, I'm gardening. I mean, I literally. Aside from winter, I'm outside constantly. So, considered high risk in that sense, in terms of risk of exposure. And then in eastern Ontario, which we're Lyme now, for us, Lyme, babesia in anaplasma are all endemic, so high risk areas. But they think that I'd actually had Lyme since I was a kid, and possibly also Bartonella. So with Bartonella, I mean, when I was about 18, I worked in a vet clinic, and I've been an animal lover my whole life. So I pick up everything and hug it kind of thing as a kid. Right? So you get cat scratches and cat bites and all kinds of things. And then working at a vet clinic, we know that veterinarians are at high risk for Bartonella.
And interestingly, too, when I got my armin results, surprisingly, I never tested positive for Lyme. And I asked my Lyme literate doctor, and I said, well, this doesn't make sense. And he says, yeah, it does. He said, if you understand how the Lyme bacteria actually works, its whole job is to cloak itself from your immune system. And he said, if you've had Lyme for decades, he said, your body doesn't even produce a. Sorry. He says, your body probably doesn't even produce an antibody to this stuff anymore because you've had it for so long, it doesn't even recognize that it's there. Right. And that's one of the challenges, is that we're testing generally for antibodies, but we also know more now about the HLA genotypes and how some people just do not have the genetics to mount a very strong immune response to anything. So that can affect whether or not you produce antibodies to Lyme disease.
But it had all the symptoms. And I had also forgotten, too, that when I was a biologist, particularly when I was a PhD student in the US, we actually think that's where I got Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and think that I was young enough and healthy enough that my immune system was able to kind of battle it on its own. What's really interesting, though, I remember my very first year of my phd, it was at University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, very first year of my phd. I remember getting sick and getting really severe vertico.
And then I started to notice some behavioral changes in myself. And then I just thought, oh, it's stress and whatever. Never even thought about it. Now that I look back, because that was in about 1995, I look back and I'm like, that was a bite. That was a tick bite. What did I get at that point? Probably Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but who knows what else? Potentially Bartonella.
And in 1995, I was also on a two month field course in Costa Rica, Central America, and we were hiking through all kinds of forests, and it was a two month field ecology course that I was on. So we spent two months traveling across the entire country, living in really remote field stations in the middle of nowhere. And I remember we had just been in the atlantic lowland rainforest, and we had to hike out about 20, get back to civilization or a ride to civilization. I've been wearing shorts, and I remember kind of putting my hand down on my thigh going, what's that? And pulled off a fully engorged tick in Costa Rica. Never even thought for a nanosecond that that could be carrying something that could harm me. And especially when you're in human tropical forest, there are ticks everywhere, and they actually form, I don't know, sort of the proper scientific name, but as ecologists, we used to call them seed ticks. And I think they're just basically nymphal ticks. And what they would do is they would actually form a ball on the tip of a leaf. And so if a mammal came by and brushed against it, that entire ball of ticks would land on your arm and literally like 300 ticks with baby ticks would just scatter. So we used to carry duct tape and use it like a limp brush kind of thing, and just kind of use the sticky side of the tape to kind of grab these things off of us. But that was just considered normal for us as biologists and we didn't even blink an eye. And I never even thought, could that thing have given me something? And. Highly possible.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: Wow. And lint rollers are great. I lint roll my dog, my skin, my clothes. Yeah, no, they do work really good. And I recently, well, maybe a year ago, found out that they actually have lint rollers for animal hair, so they're, like, ten times as strong. I'm like, can they really be? And I did, like, total game changer between a regular clothing lint roller and a pet lint roller. Huge difference. Huge difference.
[00:54:40] Speaker C: I need to get one of those. I have three husky mixed up.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So I know we talked a few weeks ago. So I have a question for you, because I know that, obviously, you're out in nature. You've been around all of this. You've been bit a million times.
Most of us that go through Lyme, it's quite the journey that we go through, and it's quite, absolutely a nightmare, and we get so paranoid about being reinfected.
Do you have any good tips for people? How can they venture back out if they're a hiker and now they're petrified to go out?
What can you share with the listeners that might help ease somebody's brain? Obviously, awareness. Right. Be aware and check yourself and prevent. Do all the normal stuff. But do you have anything else that you can add that might help them to alleviate their fears?
[00:55:37] Speaker C: It is a really tough one. Right. And I'll admit, I mean, I am a complete outdoors person, and I actually went through almost like a level of PTSD, just being terrified of ticks and going outdoors. And if I went outside and I saw a tick, it's almost like I would be enraged at it. And I thought, okay, hang on a second here. You're about to pop a cork because you're so angry at this little arachnid.
But it was the fact that, hey, I've just had to spend $70,000 out of pocket. My retirement is gone.
I'm still sick. It's just that I'm much better than I was, but I have a chronic illness now that I'm stuck with, and my health kind of does this, and it's up and down. So that was a really tough journey, even for me as a biologist. And, I mean, my area of study as a research scientist was evolutionary ecology and population genetics of insects. So I've spent my entire life crawling around on the ground collecting bugs to kind of be at that state of kind of just such incredible sort of beyond apprehension. And I remember just kind of sitting myself down and saying, hang on a second. The thing that makes you most happy is to be out there, right? And we know the benefits of nature in terms of our health, our psychology.
I think what I would say to people is we get so much benefit from being outside, getting vitamin D from the sun, and just the stress relief of being outside. And all of the positives, to me, those far, far outweigh the negatives of being worried about ticks. And I'm not saying don't be worried, but as you said, we have measures that we can take, and this is kind of the first part of the book that I published online, and tick borne diseases in 2021 was, how do you go out there and protect yourself from ticks? Like, what are the measures that you can take to mitigate or reduce the risk of getting a tick bite? And I think that's it. It's the things like making sure that you use a tick spray and a keratin based tick spray, good for 12 hours, highly effective, safe, much safer than deet, doing frequent tick checks, wearing, say, white socks with your hiking boots or whatever. So you can see things doing those frequent tick checks as soon as you come in. Like, if I'm outside gardening, as soon as I come in, I peel my clothes off, I stick them in the dryer on high for 20 minutes. I hop in the shower, because if there's a tick that's just crawling on you, it hasn't started feeding, but it's just crawling. As soon as the water hits it, it's gone. So those are the measures. And then I get out of the shower, and then my clothes are out of the dryer, and I check them, and I have a full length mirror in my bathroom. So, like it or not, I do my full body checks. And it's not necessarily always pretty, but it's like, this is your life. This is your health and your future, so get used to it. So it's really just accepting that we have to embrace these new habits. But if we do this, then we can really, truly keep the risk of a tick bite fairly low.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: I think those are some good tips and kind of looking at it in the positive way, right? We're supposed to think positively. We should just be happy that we have all of this knowledge, because everybody else that doesn't know anything about Lyme disease, they're just out there enjoying the outdoors, and they have no idea the fear that surrounds them.
But, yes, definitely all of the things that you said above, for sure.
[00:59:10] Speaker C: Just making people wise and aware, not afraid. Right.
Somebody was saying to me, oh, gosh, just a couple of years ago, I don't know if I can go outside.
You know, I wasn't trying to be sarcastic or melodramatic, but I said, just think of. So people live in Churchill. Manitoba is the province of Manitoba in Canada. So Churchill is subarctic, and it's the polar bear capital of the world. And I said, people do die from polar bear attacks, but here's a community where people have learned to coexist with one of the top land predators, and they just take measures to keep themselves safe. And I said, I'm not trying to kind of be sort of facetious here, but I'm just saying, I think anytime we do have some sort of a risk, there are measures that we can take to be safe and to realize, too, that there's no guarantees in life. Every time those of us with a driver's license, every time we get behind the wheel, there's a risk. But there's ways to reduce that risk. And so I think that's how we approach life is to say, focus on the good things. And if you were once a hiker or a kayaker or a gardener or whatever, keep doing it. Just put your spray on, do your tick checks, do all those things. And I'll be honest, the tick bites that I've had since 2019, most of those were kind of my own stupidity where it was like, oh, I'm just going to go out in the backyard for literally, like, two minutes, and then it's like, oh, hey, look at.
Oh, squirrel, look at that. And then you're not paying attention. And next, you know, I'm outside for ten minutes without my tick spray, and then that's when I get a tick and a tick bite, right? And get reinfected.
So I've had to become very strict with myself and say, look, okay, as soon as you get up in the summertime, as soon as you get up, put my shorts on. And Saturday morning or something, I just spray myself with a keratin before I go outside, and then I don't have to worry because the spray is good for 12 hours.
And then I know that I have taken the measures to go outside and have fun and be safe in my part time, I used to run an environmental education organization, and the purpose of that organization was connecting people to nature and inspiring them to care about it and protect it.
I still do that. I still think it's really important for people to get out in nature because we have so many benefits from it, and I don't think hiding inside is going to do us any good.
[01:01:39] Speaker D: Yeah, I agree.
Well, in closing, what is the name of your book, and how can people get a hold of it?
[01:01:48] Speaker C: So my book is Lyme disease picks in you and folks can order it. It's from Firefly Books Canada. They can order it on Amazon, or you can ask your local bookshop to order it in for you. And I wrote that book. I actually wrote it in 2021 when I was still sick from Lyme disease. But I'd done a lot of reading of the peer reviewed scientific research about Lyme and treatment and diagnoses and all those sorts of things. And I just felt like I'm in a privileged position where I have scientific background so I can read this stuff and understand it, but what about the people who can't? They don't have access to that information. So then what I started to think about was, well, could I write a book that's kind of like a primer of Lyme and tick borne diseases? Something that my mother could have understood, so that it's just kind of like a general guide that allows us to understand what is Lyme disease? What are these tick borne diseases? Again, an entire chapter on how to prevent or minimize the chance of a tick bite. What to do if you're bitten.
I don't spend a lot of time in the book on treatment simply because it is such a massive topic. And I think there are some really great books already out there. And also the other part of it too, is because the treatment for tick bornelsis is so individualized, it really depends on what strains you infected with. Do you have any other preexisting health conditions? There's so many different factors that affect how our bodies respond to the presence of those self bacteria.
I kind of didn't really sort of want to wait into that topic so much. It was really more about understanding, essentially, if you are bitten by a tick, how do you navigate the healthcare system?
Because when I started, I didn't know anything about it and I was naive and that almost cost me my life because I trusted a medical system that also knows nothing about it.
And so things like, what's the likely if you get your two tier blood test under the public healthcare system?
If it's negative, what's the chance of getting a false negative? Basically, what I say to people about those public health tests, the two tier testing is if it's positive, it's positive, but if it's negative, tells you nothing. You could either not have Lyme or you could have Lyme and the test failed to detect it, and you have no way to tell the difference between those two things. So if it's positive, tells you something, if it's negative, it tells you nothing. Go get some private testing.
It's really about those sorts of things. How do I navigate what's happening to me? What does this information need mean? And it's really, I think ultimately, when I wrote the book, it was about, we have to advocate for ourselves as patients with chickborne diseases because nobody else. Our public health care system, very sadly, is not going to help us. So we have to go to private doctors. How do we advocate for our own care? And that's kind of really what a big chunk of the book is about.
[01:04:44] Speaker B: That's great. We need that. We definitely need that because there's a lot of books out there, like you said, the different treatment options, and there's so many that you can't cover them. But just starting kind of with what do they call what I need for technology, like the 101 for dummies or something? Kind of sounds like that. I think it's perfect lung disease for dummies. Yes.
[01:05:11] Speaker D: Well, Shelley, this was wonderful, and thank you so much for bringing all this information out and for helping people in so many different ways. So thank you so much for taking your time.
[01:05:23] Speaker C: Yes, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, and thanks for what you guys do as well, because I think it's really sharing knowledge and getting the word out and helping people to navigate this difficult journey. I think that's what's so important. I mean, I currently run a lime support group locally, and I'm also just working with some folks to start up some advocacy work here in Canada, and I think it's just so needed. And so, you know, hats off to both of you for the great work that you do as well and helping people.
[01:05:53] Speaker B: It is. They need our voices, and it takes a village. So we appreciate you so much.
[01:05:57] Speaker C: Sure does. Sure does. Thank you so much.
[01:05:59] Speaker B: Thank you.
[01:06:00] Speaker D: Thank you.
[01:06:07] 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, lyestream.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
[email protected] 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.
