I worked damn hard at healing my Hashimoto’s for about 6 years. Some people are like “I cut out gluten and now my Hashi’s is in remission.” I’m like, “that’s so cute.”
I did everything: yoga, meditation, Auto Immune Protocol Diet, Keto diet, every other kind of eating style there is, tried all the supplements, stress management, breathwork, journaling, reading, you get the point. I even tried “not trying to heal” to see if taking my focus off it would work, also because I would just get sick of it. Nothing pushed my labs into remission. I got close. Very slowly over the 6 years my labs were getting closer to remission but that was it… ”close.”
Then 2020 hit and I had a lot of stress in my life. It was so chaotic and stressful that I actually forgot we were in a pandemic (which in itself was stressful). Some of my least favorite symptoms crept back in: the buzzy feeling of being electrocuted, weight gain, exhaustion, missing out on activities due to extremely low energy, etc.
My routine lab work was due February 2021 (I was getting labs done once a year with my functional medicine doctor at the time). These labs came back as less than favorable. Grrrrr!!!
New things popped up that I hadn’t had before. I felt like I was beating my head against a facking wall. When I spoke with that doctor, she said I was “Immunocompromised”. In the middle of a facking pandemic I was told this!! And to try not to get Covid cuz it would be very bad for me.
So, I obviously spiraled out of control into the deep dark abyss of fear, loneliness and depression. The Winter of 2021 was one of the hardest times in my life. After a week of insomnia, where I would spend the night crying and praying to anyone out there that listened, I was guided to someone that works with people with auto immune/chronic infections. In my first conversation with him he asked if I had ever been tested for Lyme.
And all the dots connected for me.
We did the Lyme/co-infection & mycotoxins test. And all came back positive. I will chat about the mycotoxins (which is mold infection) at a later time. One issue at a time here. HA! Our guess is that I was born with Lyme (passed along from my mom). My mom has never been tested for Lyme but she was diagnosed with RA at the age of 18. And RA, along with Lupus and MS are commonly misdiagnosed Lyme cases. That’s just our guess of where I came across Lyme. I was born sick and spent a lot of time as a child and teenager with issues that lead me to believe I have struggled with this my whole life. It just took until later years and lots of stress for it to really flare and show its true colors.
I am in the middle of doing a year-long detox protocol specifically designed for those with Lyme, and other chronic infections, in attempts to reduce my symptoms. It will probably take more than a year to heal the Lyme infection but knowing what I am dealing with helps. Obviously, I don’t want to have Lyme, but it has been nice knowing there was more to the story. And now I have a better idea of what to be healing. It’s hard to stay positive sometimes; however, I am truly grateful for where my body is at. I think my body has done a kick ass job of allowing me to live a life as full as I have, even with this chronic infection. Some people are completely crippled by Lyme (and other chronic infections) so I try to keep things in perspective. And I try to really live my life to its fullest on days I feel good. One very cool thing about having those really bad days is that I get excited about small things now.
