My journey with tick borne (Lyme) disease begins in early 2014. I was 19 years old and I was making the most of my life by living independently and studying in Brisbane. I had always been a very outgoing, super active person who loved to make the most of every day. Most weekends I would go out partying, go to the beach, camping or to a music festival. However, around mid 2014 my active lifestyle started to give me grief. My first symptoms that developed was a pain in my upper right quadrant, around my liver. The pain was intense. I went to the doctor and they found that I had an inflamed liver, but they couldn’t figure out why. A few days later my gut (which had never given me any issues) started to become bloated, cramped and painful. I started to develop allergies that were never there and couldn’t figure out why I was experiencing so much pain and discomfort. After visiting more doctors, doing a lot of tests and ultrasounds they put my issues down to stress from my busy lifestyle. I then started to experience extreme anxiety, something that I had never dealt with before. It was a horrible feeling. After about a year of visiting different doctors and believing that I had gluten intolerance and anxiety things started getting worse. I started experiencing numbness in my hands and feet, I would get extremely dizzy out of nowhere, I would get stabbing & shooting pain all over my body, I would randomly pass out and lose consciousness (when I went to the hospital they would tell me I was having an anxiety attack). Then came the migraines, so bad that I wanted to end my life… I was put on medication for them but that didn’t work. I had pressure on my head that was there for about 3 years. By this stage I was really over being sick and not knowing exactly what was wrong with me. So, at the age of 21, I decided that I needed to get away from my busy lifestyle and go travelling in order to clear my head. So I packed my bags, my 10 different types of medications (none of which worked) and went to India. In India everything got even worse. I had a great trip but had to come home early as I was very unwell. I hadn’t had an erection in 3 months, my toes were now completely numb and had been for several months, I developed arthritis in my hands, knees and feet (my arthritis in my right hand was so bad that I could no longer write in my travel journal), my migraines were now daily and would leave me locked in a room for weeks on end, I couldn’t see or hear properly, I would have terrible episodes of vertigo that would leave me on the floors with the walls spinning around me. In the end I had to move back home with my parents in Melbourne and leave my friends, studies and work behind in Brisbane. I was devastated. After visiting over 20 different Western doctors I was finally referred to somebody who can help. I went and saw Judy early April 2016, about 2 years after I first got sick. She found that I had over 20 different tick borne disease infections, including Lyme, Babesia, Ricketsia and more. I had my blood sent overseas and this was confirmed. I traced my tick bite back to a tick I was bitten by in Byron Bay in 2014. The next 3 months were the most difficult few months of my life. Now that my body knew I was sick, I got a lot worse. I was bed bound, couldn’t walk, didn’t have enough energy to shower myself, I would get intense heart palpitations, shortness of breath, twitching all through my body and had many more debilitating symptoms. Although I felt as if my life was over, and that the pain would never end, I followed Judy’s protocol and did everything the recommended. In addition to the protocol, I also changed my diet from vegetarian to strict paleo, removing all inflammatory foods from my diet I did coffee enemas to help clean my bowel, bone broth and vegetable juice fasts for days on end, a lot of meditation and reaffirmation. I started to tell my body that it as healing and imaging myself running and doing all the things I used to be able to do. After about 3 months I started to get a little energy back. After a lot of hard work, diligence and pain, 10 months later I found out that I was in remission. There was no lyme or co-infections in my body, I felt over the moon with joy. I have now been in remission for about 6 months and most of my lingering symptoms have gone. I get the occasional brain fog and stiff joint, which Judy is helping me with.
After healing myself using natural medicine, I was very motivated to help others going through similar issue I went through. I am now studying Chinese Medicine (acupuncture & herbal medicine) and working a part time job. I go camping on the weekend, practise yoga and meditation most days and am able to live my life like a normal person. I am very grateful to have come out of Lyme a better, more mature, knowledgeable person. Judy is a fantastic practitioner, she really knows what she is doing and she will fix you if you stick to the protocol! Don’t give up, you WILL get better :)
I kept track of my Lyme journey on Instagram @lyme_light
