I call myself a Lyme Survivor. Those of us who have lived through Lyme to talk about it, have much to express about the "Lyme Controversy". My son, J., and I were diagnosed by Dr. M. in June 2006 with Late Lyme and multiple co-infections.
The diagnosis was clinical, the only accepted diagnosis in Canada. We each had one Lyme test done and they both came back "borderline" for bb (Lyme). Antibodies for Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Bartonella, and Epstein Barr were also found in our blood.
Dr. M. suspects we both are also infected with Babesia according to our symptom history for years; and also that J. may have been initially infected July 1989. That summer we had gone on a camping trip from London Ontario to the New Jersey Shore trough upper New York State.
My son's youth was riddled with seemingly not connected health issues.
J.'s health issues ranged from stuttering that started at age 3, a few months after we went camping in N.J.(he was speaking in fluent sentences already at 2 1/2), to a burst appendix at age 8. He grew up with leg pains and "allergic" rashes, asthma and more.
At 15 he had a run in with Mono. that was very severe! He remembers a significant part of his growing up being affected by health issues.
In May 2000 J. got bit by a tick while on a school field trip. The tick was tested and it was "negative" (not certain for what though since there are hundreds of strains of bb plus co-infections).
We know for sure J. got infected at least one time when a bulls-eye rash appeared about 2002, so large on his leg, that we did not recognize it as a bulls-eye till years later.
It was after that his health took an even worse downward spiral. J. was having an increasingly difficult time keeping up with school work and his delicate health. Also trying to live a normal active teenager's lifestyle, he noticed he had to cut short activities and severe reactions to foods at times. His body seemed to also retain weight.
He calculated early that no matter what he ate, his body would gain weight, so much more readily than his friends. I was always pushing the healthy eating and even had fed him the 4 Day Rotation diet as a toddler.
He was bored with our way of eating, gluten free and Vegan too for years and so rebelled a bit against our non-mainstream way of living, and loved his junk food for a while. I too got lazy during the single mother years of 2 children under 12!
Our diet started to include foods that were not the best choices.
This I suspect further aggravated health concerns of course. Since this could turn into a book, so I will fast forward ahead to keep this to a brief note for now.
Having gone through all of this J. now eats a very strict diet of only few foods as his body at age 20 pretty well just gave out. Right around the time he got diagnosed (June 2006), he was also just hitting that worst stage! His liver apparently may have been swollen for years.
Jason received the liver diagnosis Dec. 2007 after having been in constant pain under the right ribs for months and months and also unable to digest most foods.
Religiously drinking re-mineralized distilled water ,1/2 his body weight in oz min. per day, could usually prevent emergency room visits. Yet the slightest thing would set him off. Perfume, or toxic wood burning in a neighbour's fireplace, or even non-organic foods could pose a problem.
It seemed his body was so toxic that it would start shutting down the digestive tract. J. re-visited fasting, and semi-fasting, having tried it a few years back.
Jason found relief in eating almost nothing, continually refining his diet to the point of gluten free, sugr free, mostly casein free plus much more. He is now healing slowly and I will dedicate another post to what he has been doing that seems to be
working.J. at Ipperwash Summer 2009 taking pics of Lex and Jess during the beautiful sunset on Lake Huron.
