Please Help my Wife Treat her Chronic Illness

Hi, I’m Kevin, and I’m 33 currently living in Illinois with my wife Katlyn 28, and our two dogs, Ella and Oakley. I’m seeking help for my wife who has been struggling to find a cure for her chronic disease. Donations would not only help support her medical treatments, they would change our lives and end this eight year battle. Below I have shared our journey and why this is so important to me and why I need your help now. 

I’m here asking in all sincerity for help which is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because I never wanted to admit that we needed it and that she was sick. My wife has not been vocal about her symptoms, or diagnosis. Even communicating about her illness with my family or friends has become challenging because there are A LOT of things happening in our world right now that are VERY important. At the same time our little world we live in has felt like it has been slowly and rapidly declining.

 She first began having unexplained symptoms of joint pain at age 20. Her pain was ignored, and was told she was in perfect health. Since then she has been on a relentless pursuit to find answers and not pain pill prescriptions. I knew in my gut something was not right but I didn’t know why, or where even to start to help her. She began to change her diet and we started to focus on the foods she was eating, and the products she was using. She thought it maybe was something that I’m putting into her body that is causing her pain. While these adjustments have brought her temporary relief at times, it hasn’t been enough to maintain consistency. 

At the beginning she would encounter spontaneous flare up’s of pain that would last just a few days. As her condition remained undiagnosed those few days turned into a few weeks, and a few weeks would turn into months of unexplained chronic pain. Some years she pushed harder to find answers but repeating her story over and over in hopes that one of the doctors would have some glimmer of hope.  I could see her began to question her sanity as she was mostly met by doctors that not only didn’t believe her story, they didn’t believe her pain was real either. Why is this happening to her? How can someone who is experiencing excruciating pain go to an emergency room, only to be told they are fine and then sent home.  

As the years slowly passed by,  she noticed her symptoms started to worsen and they started to become more frequent as well. She tried to convince herself that this is how life was now. That she was just getting older and that's why it would hurt her knees walking upstairs or why her memory wasn’t as sharp as it was when she was “younger” (She is currently still in her 20s). She tried to reach out to anyone that would listen. Whether it was a therapist, a life coach, or someone experiencing similar symptoms on social media. She was often met with a lot of hesitation, blame, and excuses on why she would have a symptom or symptoms like that. Common responses were: I know what this is, this is what you have to do, and I’m tired all the time too you're just working too much. So, began to stop sharing her story. She stopped bringing it up because she couldn’t bear having one more person not see or hear what she was really saying. Even me as her husband didn’t know most of what was going on because she was so afraid to share. 

Thankfully she found a diagnosis! It took her 8 years, 58+ doctors visits to only find out a result and synopsis from her 53rd visit showed a diagnosis of Chronic Lyme Disease. 53 VISITS. 53 doctor appointments before someone looked into her eyes and TRULY LISTENED and BELIEVED what she was saying. 

Here is what we've learned, Lyme disease is one of the most controversial diseases in the medical community. A lot of doctors don’t believe it is real or have an understanding of its debilitating effects if left untreated. This is due to the CDC lack of accurate testing and symptoms. There is ONE medication you can take that is covered by the insurance. However, the 30 days of antibiotics are only effective when you catch lyme early on. Since they believe she has had lyme for what they’re thinking now is from 10+ years. Antibiotics are no longer an option to take, as they will only create new symptoms or make her current symptoms worse. This is due to the effectiveness of the medicine and abundance of lyme bacteria in her body. The bacterias have excellent ability to hide in every area of the human body. 

Second,  the lyme blood test is wrong on average 50% of the time — that is like flipping a coin but with your life, on my wife's life. If there isn’t accurate testing, then there isn’t an accurate way to treat it. A tick bite that leads to lyme is often marked with a bullseye rash and many doctors won’t even take lyme into consideration if there is no rash. Less than 50% of lyme patients remember having a rash. There are over 300,000 new cases of lyme each year— I can only imagine what that number would be with accurate testing.

Within all my research internally and externally, we realized that her treatment plan will need to be more extensive to really get her body and health back in balance. I found a medical center in Arizona, Envita Medical Center. Envita has been treating Lyme disease for 20 years. Together we went there this past July to meet with the team of specialists and doctors to have extensive testing done. We discovered that we will have to temporarily move to Arizona in October for six-twelve weeks for daily medical treatments. These treatments will consist of her having a port put into her chest in order to receive IV fluids and medicine five days a week for a couple hours each day. She will need to take a medical leave from her job which will place her career on hold, but we can no longer put her life and health on hold. I just want to her to feel better. 

All of the treatments at the Envita Medical Center are not covered by insurance and must be paid out of pocket. They estimated treatments can cost anywhere from $50,000-$100,000. This is our only option to get some of the quality of her life back. She feels she has completely lost what it feels like her life. She can no longer do the simple things that she had enjoyed doing like taking a long walk, practicing yoga, or some days she even lose the ability to drive a car. On average she miss one week of work a month due to her symptoms and had to have special accommodation setup for her because of it . I see her cry everyday.

This year has been all about change for all of us. Whether we want it or not. I know looking forward to our journey over the next couple months even though they will be difficult. I feel for my wife who will be faced with mental, physical and emotional challenges. Some of which will be the toughest she has ever experienced and will ever have to experience in her lifetime. It is that or lose any chance at what good quality of life that she has left. She told me this recently that really stuck: "Lyme will not define who I am, rather than who I become." 

Your donation will help to support the treatment plan with Envita Medical Center and help give me my happy, healthy wife back.