A little life update.
The last year has been nothing short of a dream come true for Jase and me. We had a vision, set out to make it a reality and last year we had a front row seat to all the guests coming and enjoying this property we poured so much of ourselves into. We talk a lot about how every now and then something will stop us in our tracks and we’ve both had one of those moments where you’re flooded with emotion and the realization that we did it.
But sometimes what people see happening on the surface or in Instagram stories isn’t always the full story. It’s often just a small glimpse at our day. Our other reality is that for the last year, we’ve been desperately chasing down answers to some health issues that continue to plague me.
About this time last year, I started struggling with pain in my shoulders, arms and hands. I had a hard time gripping things, lifting things, walking and, sometimes, struggled just putting my clothes on. To be honest, this time last year, I was in the trenches everyday doing a lot of physical work trying to finish up the cottages so I chalked it up to being tired and just needing a break. In May 2024, we had our Grand Opening and immediately after, I crashed. I took a break. I did everything I could to let my body rest. By July I wasn’t seeing any improvement. I would have good days and but when the bad days hit, they hit hard.
My hands would swell and hurt so bad. Thankfully, I had Jase snapped a picture of my hands one evening and the next time I was at my doctor’s office, I showed her the picture. She’s awesome and she jumped right to action. She ordered up a round of bloodwork. After a couple of weeks, she called me with the results. I didn’t really know what to expect, but the first thing out of her mouth was, “You’re positive for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Epstein Barr Virus”.
I’m sorry, what? Jase and I were both thrown off by that diagnosis. I had never shown any signs of arthritis and I don’t have RA in my family. My doctor said there’s so much inflammation she didn’t want to put all our eggs in the RA basket yet. She prescribed several supplements to help reduce the inflammation in my body. In addition, she ordered both food sensitivity tests and a stool sample tests to gather more data.
I got through the those tests, got the results and learned that I have candida overgrowth in my gut, Epstein Barre Virus, positive RA factors. I remember feeling a little relief that it wasn’t all in my head, but also so confused by the random assortment of issues I had going on. My doctor recommended carnivore diet to kill off the candida as quickly as possible, so I did just that. I locked down my diet and started eating meat and eggs…and to my surprise, I started to feel better.
By Thanksgiving, I felt like there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. I was having more good days than I was bad and that made me hopeful. I don’t know if it was the holidays or what, but even though I kept my diet in check, I started to feel like I was on a slippery slope. I was monitoring everything I ate, then tracking how it made me feel afterwards. It wasn’t fun because none of it seemed to make sense.
My pain was weird. One day I would have severe pain in my shoulder, the next day it would be in my ankle, the next day it would be in my neck or my jaw…it just bounced around all over the place. I did a deep dive into RA and learned that it’s a fairly symmetrical autoimmune disease, meaning, if you have a flare up in one hand/finger/elbow…you usually have it in the other at the same time. That wasn’t the case for me. The inflammation would pop up randomly all over the place. The area would swell and feel warm and RA just wasn’t adding up to me.
When Jase and I went to The Omni Homestead at the beginning of January this year, I was feeling pretty defeated. I had been looking forward to this trip for months and day one, I felt terrible. My left shoulder was in excruciating pain and even though I tried to put on a good face, Jase knew I didn’t feel good. Over dinner that first night, we discussed how my inflammation just bounced around….no rhyme or reason. At dinner, in a moment of desperation, I googled, “arthritis that moves throughout your body”. What popped up was “migratory arthritis”. Interesting. That felt like a little string to pull on, so, I google that.
This is what I found:
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“Migratory arthritis is a condition characterized by joint pain that moves from one joint to another. It is a type of polyarthritis, which means it affects multiple joints.
Causes
Migratory arthritis can be caused by a variety of underlying conditions, including:
Infections: Bacterial infections, such as rheumatic fever and gonococcal arthritis
Autoimmune diseases: Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and psoriatic arthritis
Metabolic disorders: Gout
Medications: Certain medications, such as statins and clopidogrel, can cause migratory arthritis
Cancer: In rare cases, migratory arthritis can be a sign of cancer
Symptoms
The main symptom of migratory arthritis is joint pain that moves from one joint to another. Other symptoms may include:
swelling, redness, warmth, stiffness, and fatigue”
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All of that made sense to me. So when we got back, I immediately reached out to my doctor. She said that migratory arthritis is usually related to an untreated bacterial infection…could be anything from strep to lyme disease. She ordered up another round of bloodwork and when that came back, I was positive for Lyme, specifically, borrelia burgdorferi bacteria.
The more I learn about Lyme, the more it all makes sense.
Things I’ve learned & puzzle pieces that fit:
Lyme is hard to diagnose because it can present as other autoimmune diseases - thus the RA diagnosis.
It is rarely the only infection/bacteria present - it usually has co-infections…enter candida and Epstein Barre Virus (EBV).
I also learned that it’s a spiral bacteria that burrows in the good cells and “hitches a ride” throughout the body…which totally made sense as to why one day I felt it in my shoulder, the next in my ankle, etc, etc.
It’s a challenge to treat because it can hide in the good cells to protect itself from medications.
Finally….things were starting to makes sense. I honestly can’t put into words how I felt learning that I have Lyme. A little relief? Confusion? Fear? Literally, all of the above.
I’ve been on my treatment journey for about 5 weeks now. To be frank, I’ve done the conventional treatment - 30 days on antibiotics and I feel no different or better than I was 5 weeks ago. Although I’ve implemented some natural remedies along the way, I have pivoted to a more holistic approach, at this point.
I hope to share more as I begin to make progress.