joe the tick

“I beat Lyme. I’d like to share my story,” wrote Joe. To someone hurting with Lyme symptoms, could there be any sweeter words than those?

Joe’s story filled me with inspiration. “Don’t give up hope,” he says, and he should know.

Although he now resides in Europe, he grew up in a region of the US where ticks are a part of everyday life, especially for a kid with a dog. Sick during his childhood with mysterious symptoms that he was eventually told he had outgrown, he struggled with chronic pain many years later. After a vacation in Barcelona, he became very ill and dragged himself from doctor to doctor, as one after another refused to treat him for Lyme. He was desperate and suicidal during the roughest period, which lasted six years. At the end of that time he discovered a newly established Lyme treatment clinic in Germany, the Borreliose Centrum Augsburg, and his life took a dramatic turn for the better.

At the clinic, his recovery from Lyme officially began. He was placed on three months of IV antibiotics, but not a “cocktail” blend that some US Lyme doctors use. Immediately, he began feeling better. In addition to antibiotics, doctors at the clinic engaged him in several types of the supporting therapies, including infrared and oxygen treatments. He also uses the powerful herbal therapies from Stephen Buhner’s book, Healing Lyme.

Today, Joe has returned to the working world. The terrible six year period now seems surreal to him. “It’s an intense pain that doesn’t go away, and nobody can understand it,” he says. “It’s confusing for the person who has it, trying to explain it to their friends and their employers.”

Joe feels strongly that people who heal from Lyme should follow up with their doctors, so medical professionals can better track which Lyme treatments are working, and which are not. He has talked to doctors who tell him that often patients leave their care and never update the doctors about their condition. Unfortunately, it’s easy to find stories of people suffering from Lyme disease, yet less common to hear about those who are healing and engaged in vital and productive lives again. There’s plenty of bad news on the web. This is why we collect and share success stories.