How I Discovered I Have Lyme Disease

My journey with Lyme began back in 2008.

When I say ‘began’, I mean I discovered that I had it through the Igenix Western blot test. I had seven positive IgM bands. If you don’t understand that reference, you can read more about it here.

I was pretty surprised, though I had been contending with various health issues for years at that point.

A couple years before the Igenix test, I also found that I was loaded with mercury, so I attributed that fact to a lot of my issues.

Symptoms of Lyme

While I had an official Lyme diagnosis, I didn’t have the hallmark symptoms of pain, bladder, and nervous system issues. Yet.

I know the symptoms for Lyme are a mile long, but there are some pretty telling ones, namely pain.

My issues, up until that point, seemed to revolve around food allergies, itching, fatigue, and depression.

After doing 1-2 years of chelation therapy for the mercury, I felt markedly better, so I didn’t feel the need to pursue the Lyme diagnosis.

2009

After my Lyme diagnosis in late 2008, my husband and I (really, I) got pregnant in early 2009!

I couldn’t believe it, frankly, after all my years of irregular menstrual cycles. I truly didn’t think I’d ever have kids.

Upon becoming pregnant, I felt like a new woman!

It seemed I could suddenly eat anything I wanted, and I was suddenly so happy to be alive.

Getting pregnant seemed like an amazing cure-all, I could NOT believe it after so many years of struggling to just get through a day.

One naturopath told me that my immune system had basically ‘calmed down’ because of the growing baby. That ‘foreign body’ saved my broken body, allowing me to eat and feel like myself!

Then there were three…

I would go on to have two more kids in the upcoming years, breastfeeding all of them for 1-3 years.

My kids are all truly the loves of my life. I never really thought about being a mom as a younger woman and teen, but now that I am, I feel very lucky.

Throughout those years, I was able to maintain my health, with a few bumps here and there. My food allergies would return or my rashes or fatigue, but I was never as bad as I had been.

Number four

In late 2018, my husband and I discussed having a fourth child.

At this point, I was over 35 and a bit more nervous about complications that can arise from having children later in life.

We decided to give it a month and see what happened!

Well, wouldn’t you know it, a couple weeks later, I was pregnant, ha!

Long story short, this pregnancy was unlike the others. I became very sick in the first six weeks and was unable to eat properly, leading to such a bad state of dehydration that I took in two liters of fluid intravenously.

From then on, I felt horrible off and on. My morning sickness was atrocious for weeks, I was in a constant state of fatigue, I had blood sugar issues, vericose veins, and just a general sense of ‘fear’ the entire time.

Once I birthed Miss Miki Lux in October of 2019, I was sure my problems were behind me. Boy, was I wrong.

Two months after having her, I had a wisdom tooth removed, and about a week after that, I was struck down by lower back pain. It felt as though my lower back had ‘ripped’, which left me bent over in pain and unable to do my ordinary tasks.

After countless doctors, including chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, naturopaths, dentists, and the like, I was no better off and becoming emotionally worse.

It was a very God-focused time in my life. That and my loving husband were pretty much the only things that kept me going.

BAck to Lyme

Those ten years of having children kind of brought me full circle and back to the 2008 Lyme diagnosis.

Suddenly, I was having A LOT of pain, as well as bladder issues, rashes, fatigue, headaches, and much more. Interestingly enough, I even had a bullseye-looking rash on my abdomen that lasted for nearly a year.

They say Lyme doesn’t usually act alone, and in my case, that’s true.

I’ve also tested high for various mycotoxins (which come from mold exposure), as well as a few unique strains of candida.

There have been several other nutrient tests I’ve done that have given me some good information, and I’ll go into those in future posts.

So, here I sit, day after day, dealing with this insidious disease that either blatantly or secretly affects so many others, worldwide.

I never know what kind of day it will be. Will I wake up tired? In pain? Out of breath with stabbing pains all over? Sometimes, I can eat and have an appetite, other days I eat like a bird (or rather as much as one).

It’s a crap shoot, and I’m just trying to get through each day being the best mom and wife I can be.

I fail more often than not, and my health gets to me and brings me down. It leaves me wondering, why me? I try to do everything I can right and still…

Honestly, my faith in God has brought me through a lot of this. Without it and my family, I would have probably lost hope long ago.

I’m still in the midst of things, which is one of the major reasons for starting this blog. I wanted to document some of what I’m doing in hope that it might help someone else.

So, as Johnny Carson used to say, more to come! ♥