What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
The Hidden Battle Within: Surviving Lyme Disease
How much would you endure to save your life and your child's? Mary Lyn Hammer takes us on an extraordinary journey through the medical wilderness of Lyme disease, revealing the devastating reality of this widely misunderstood condition.
After being bitten by a tick during a business conference, Mary Lynn spent six and a half years suffering through debilitating symptoms while doctors repeatedly missed her diagnosis. The disease struck during her pregnancy, passing to her unborn daughter and setting them both on a path of chronic illness. From extreme skier to someone who couldn't walk up stairs, Mary Lyn watched her vibrant life fade away despite visiting countless medical professionals.
When finally diagnosed, she faced a treatment ordeal that would challenge the strongest spirit. With a six-figure medical debt accumulating and her daughter showing cognitive challenges, Mary Lyn refused to accept conventional wisdom about chronic Lyme. Her turning point came through discovering the role of biofilms in protecting the bacteria from treatment – a breakthrough that eventually led to complete recovery for both mother and daughter.
The revelation that Lyme disease can be sexually transmitted and passed in utero reveals why entire families often suffer without understanding why. Through years of research and personal experimentation, Mary Lynn developed a comprehensive three-phase protocol that has condensed recovery time from years to just months. Her approach addresses not just the bacterial infection but the complex immune dysfunction and detoxification challenges that make Lyme so difficult to overcome.
Today, Mary Lyn's daughter is 24, a college graduate thriving without limitations. Through her platform Champion for Life and her book "Over My Dead Body," Mary Lynn is bringing hope to countless sufferers who've been told their condition is untreatable or imaginary. If you or someone you love is battling unexplained chronic symptoms, her story might hold the answers you've been seeking.
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I never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back. Every time I load my gun up so I can shoot for the star, I hear a voice like who do you think?
Speaker 2:all right, everybody. Another day, another dollar, another one of my favorite episodes, my favorite podcast, because I'm biased. What if it did work? Already season four, almost season five. Holy smokes, I'm this. This is an interesting topic. I've had many, but this is, this is something that a lot it's, it's a growing concern. I would say, wouldn't you? You would agree, right, oh?
Speaker 2:yeah okay, well, without further ado, mary lynn hammer, health and wellness advocate. She's an author. She's a lyme disease and blood infection survivor who defied medical odds to fully recover after her near-death experience. After years of misdiagnosis and ineffective treatments, she took control of her healing journey, developing a customized approach that led both her and her daughter to complete recovery. Fueled by her own experience, she found a champion for life, a platform dedicated to educating and empowering others suffering from Lyme disease and chronic illnesses. Her book Over my Dead Body details her near-death experience and the unconventional methods that saved her life. Mary Lynn is on a mission to provide hope, challenge the misconceptions around Lyme disease and share the knowledge that true healing is possible. Through her work, she has helped countless individuals reclaim their health and restore their quality of life. Quality of life is very important, wouldn't you agree, mary?
Speaker 3:Oh, for sure, For sure.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't you agree, Mary? Oh, for sure, For sure. Now, Mary Lynn, you told me before we started you're originally from Miami Beach, so I'm assuming that's not where you caught lime right.
Speaker 3:I moved here from Miami Beach. I'm from Montana originally. Montana, I am, but I was bit by a tick in Hilton Head. You're a world traveler.
Speaker 2:Well, at least you know, in the continental United States. Now what were you doing?
Speaker 3:Were you golfing? No, I was at a conference. My oldest business is in education and I've had that business for 37 years and I do default prevention for student loans. So real fun times right now.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't say but yeah. But I mean when I went to, you know, I'll give a perfect example, full disclosure. My oldest is. She'll be a sophomore at the greatest university in this country, louisiana State University, just like her dad. And when I went to school, out-of-state tuition for a full year was like $9,000. And then now it's like for out-of-state it's like almost $50,000 going to Tulane, or like University of Miami, 90 something thousand dollars. It's like I did my master's at UM and it was like only 20,000. It's definitely not inflation. I would say it's hyper inflation.
Speaker 2:And you know, these loans, or not even they go with you. You can file bankruptcy 10 times and you still owe on these student loans, which is just incredible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So then you went to. You went to Hilton head, so not even anything fun.
Speaker 3:Well, you know it wasn't, it was a conference.
Speaker 2:but I have fun wherever I go, but you know, it wasn't like you're with a bunch of girls and you're heading out to Myrtle Beach and you're just hanging out all throughout South Carolina. It was work. But were you out somewhere out in the woods, or were you just like in the, you know, just outside? You know just outside.
Speaker 3:You know Well, they had an outdoor reception and we were getting eaten alive by no-see-ums. And you know, I'm from Montana where ticks you can see them sticking out of your body and the ones that give you Lyme disease that are along the East Coast are more like little spiders. Like I never saw it. I didn't have a rash, I didn't have a bullseye. I got bit. The same month I got pregnant and so you know all of the typical symptoms that show up I had because I was in my first trimester of pregnancy. So nothing stood out.
Speaker 3:That told me that there was a problem, except that one of the bites on my shin was still there like four months later. And I remember emailing one of my friends from the conference and saying what is up with the bites from Hilton head? I still have a hole in my leg and I didn't know what it was and it took them six and a half years to diagnose me. And I was also an extreme skier. So I was in incredible shape and I was working out and becoming weaker and weaker and I went from you know jumping out of helicopters and jumping off of cliffs to you know to ski, like a crazy person, to I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs and nobody could give me answers. So I went through that for six and a half years, just going from doctor to doctor, and finally I found one and he said I know exactly what you have.
Speaker 3:And then he asked if I had children, and my daughter was five years old at the time and we tracked it back. He said the first thing that shows up usually is your thyroid goes sideways. And he said when were you diagnosed with hypothyroidism? And I said 2001. And he said where were you the year before that and I went oh my gosh, I had this bite on my leg from Hilton Head and that's how we figured out how long I had had it. And then he told me that it could be passed in utero and my heart sank, because my daughter had some cognitive challenges, she was always tired and it was pretty obvious that she also had Lyme disease and it broke my heart.
Speaker 2:So for five years, the most formative years your child now, was she being misdiagnosed Like is having neurological issues, or like autism or anything like that?
Speaker 3:It wasn't autism, it was more spatial things. But she was only five, so we didn't know if it was just. You know, she was in kindergarten and so it could be that she just wasn't being taught things you know, or maybe it was a teaching style, or you know, she was so young we didn't know um, she was bright.
Speaker 3:It wasn't that she wasn't smart, it was that certain things challenged her more than other things and, um, you know, but I was but by the tick. The first month I was pregnant, so she developed in utero with Lyme disease, and then we we both got rid of Lyme in 2009, so she was in the second grade.
Speaker 3:So you know, for the first eight years of her life she was sick and you were sick and I was sick and I was a single mom and I still had to run my business and travel and go to conferences and it was rough and so, but you're overall misdiagnosed for all those years well, I wasn't really diagnosed. I kept hearing well, at your age, and I'm thinking oh, you kept.
Speaker 3:I just had a kid, I wasn't that old and and I thought, geez, if this is what 40 is like, I don't want to live to 60 or 80, you know. And and so the doctors kept blaming things like well, you know, maybe you're starting menopause or you know. It was all over the place and my primary doctor was from Hawaii, so he had never experienced Lyme disease, he didn't know anything about it. And I went to a specialty clinic and that doctor had had Lyme disease, and so he immediately, probably 20 minutes into a three-hour intake, he said I know what you have. And he hadn't actually started work at that clinic.
Speaker 3:He was there signing his personnel paperwork and he heard them talking about my case and asked if he could sit in, and so I was actually being interviewed by the other doctors and he spoke up and said I know what you have to keep going, and he let me go through the whole intake. And then he said this is, this is what you have. And and I really didn't know much about it I, I had heard about it, I knew that it came from a tick bite, but I really that was pretty much the extent of what I knew.
Speaker 2:Well, that's pretty much the only thing most people know is you get Lyme disease. What were the symptoms? That I mean eight years is a long time. What were the symptoms? There's so many.
Speaker 3:There's so many. I am at that point. I had had a migraine headache for about five years straight major fatigue, I'm assuming major fatigue, um, and I couldn't feel my feet up to my ankles.
Speaker 3:So the from the neuropathy and it wasn't like they were completely numb, it was more like the pain you know when your feet fall asleep and then they start waking up, that pain where you can't really feel them but they're painful. That's what my feet felt like up to my ankles. My arms would go to sleep. You start having foggy thinking and you know, I have a kind of a photographic memory and so you know, for somebody like me who all of a sudden I'm going, what is this thing called? And you know, and it's like it's a pen, oh yeah, like you know what it is and what it's used for, but you can't remember the names. And it's really bizarre. But they call that foggy thinking. I have floaters in my eyes and that's the actual pathogen, that like when the sunlight's going through the side of your eye, you can see these little things floating around in your eyeball.
Speaker 3:It's really bizarre and I mean there's just, there's so many symptoms, there's nerve pain, there's. I had tinnitus in my ears so it was like this loud ringing where I couldn't filter out background noise. And so going to these conferences all the time it was really difficult because if I was in a crowded room it was really difficult to filter out the noise and I was a public speaker, so that had challenges also. And then for my daughter, she wasn't remembering things and she was always tired and it was really rough.
Speaker 3:So when I started treatments, it was the same month that the NIH came out with a report saying latent chronic Lyme didn't exist, came out with a report saying latent chronic Lyme didn't exist and the Connecticut Attorney General went after them and sued them because it was written by doctors who had never treated later chronic Lyme and the Attorney General won the case and the report was thrown out. It was basically the same report reintroduced right before the Health Care Act under President Obama was introduced and pretty much was introduced so that none of the treatments would be covered by health insurance. So everything was out of pocket. You know, my daughter was sick, I was sick. I was having to work, no matter how bad I felt.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because a single parent and an entrepreneur, it wasn't like life all of a sudden stops and it's not like somebody's going to be like oh Mary Lynn, we feel for you, don't worry, all you're built, you just go rest at home. Well, we feel for you, don't worry, all your bill, you just go rest at home. Well, we got it. Well, we're going to run your, all your businesses, just yeah, yeah, that didn't happen, only in the movies.
Speaker 3:You know, we went through three years of treatments and I had a half a million dollars of outstanding medical bills at that point when we got well. So it was rough. It took. We got well in 2009 and it took me until 2013 to pay off the last bill, and you know so. It's really rough on people and it totally devastates their lives. It doesn't devastates their lives, it devastates their relationships. It's really hard for people around you to understand what you're going through, because you look normal on the outside and you're dying on the inside, and so people don't understand. And I can't even tell you and other people will tell you this too who have had Lyme or have Lyme you know people go well, you look fine and you're anything but fine.
Speaker 2:No, not at all and you know people have zero empathy, so people were probably. When you're naming some, some of your symptoms are like oh, mary Lynn, such a bitch, you know, or or you know, I, I can't believe her using all these excuses. She doesn't really want to hang out, she doesn't want to do any, oh, so forgetful. But you know, if it was something important Mary Lynn would have remembered, but clearly she doesn't think my story is important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, and I had helped tons of people over the years and I I seem to be like the revolving door for all my friends that went through divorces. And you know, when I got the disease and I said I need help, it was like radio silence. And you know, when I got the disease and I said I need help, it was like radio silence. And you know the doctor, when he diagnosed me, he said are you sure you want to do this? Because it's rough. And he said you're going to have days when you can't walk, you're going to have days when you can't talk and you're going to have days when you just want to die. And he was right. I collapsed one morning when I was making my daughter's lunch and I collapsed on the floor in the kitchen and I could not get up and she was in kindergarten and I had hired a nanny to help me. And I had hired a nanny to help me and she got there and had to take me to the doctor and do IVs and things. I had days when I was up on Capitol Hill and I had a bellman carrying me to my room one time because I was so drained by the end of the day I couldn't walk to my room. It was really rough and and there was really no answers. You know you'd, when Lyme dies it releases neurotoxins and so it creates like.
Speaker 3:I had 104 fever for six months every day when my my treatment started, with 12 IVs a week and I was taking about 300 pills a day. And I bought an energetic medicine machine because I my daughter, you know she was so little, she obviously couldn't take all of the things that I was taking, although you know, some of it was physically sheltered because she was in utero. Her infection rate wasn't as high as mine, so but still I didn't want her on all this medication. She had to go on some, but I would use this device and I would treat her for three days and then I'd treat her for three days and then I'd treat myself for three days and then I'd take a day off, and so that introduced me to the energetic medicine. So we went through three years of treatments pretty much, and one of the things that I discovered using this machine is we would be in a room, not my daughter, but I would be in a room doing IVs. We called it the IV room. Everybody in there had Lyme disease and we were all sitting there getting IVs and so I started asking the people around me if I could put them on the scanner on this machine and um. And then I started seeing patterns. Like I saw a pattern where everybody in the room had high amounts of mercury and then at one point I found that everybody was resonating for tuberculosis. It wasn wasn't traditional tuberculosis, like a regular TB test wasn't coming out positive, but everybody had this pattern.
Speaker 3:And so I agreed to kind of be the guinea pig and do a six-week treatment of streptomycin, which is a tuberculosis medication, and the die-off from the infection was so great that I actually smelled like a rotting animal. I mean it was disgusting, and but after I got through that part it was much better. And then we put my daughter on a like a mellower version of what I was doing and got her through that part. And then I started getting a pain in my right arm and I had an IV port and at first I thought it was like tennis elbow from carrying my suitcase all the time. And then it started spreading and they figured out that I had a blood infection and they thought that if they took me off of the antibiotics that I would die. So we just kept trying different antibiotics and they did an emergency surgery and took the port out and I almost died and the blood infection I had that we eventually found out about has a 3% survival rate. And so I turned gray and my hair fell out and my guts were falling out because my body wasn't strong enough to hold them in and I was literally lying in bed praying that I wouldn't die and my daughter would come in and do her homework on my bed and and I was so weak I would kind of like scoot off the bed and launch myself towards the bathroom when I had to go to the bathroom. And you know, I was just so weak and I you know a lot of it also I can describe it is that that I had some really strong god moments where I was guided to find things that helped.
Speaker 3:Um, one of the therapists said that she had a client whose wife had died from a blood infection and they had found out the name of it right before she died, but it was too late and she said she was still in touch with them. So it was Labor Day weekend and then on that Tuesday I called her and I said can you please call this man and get the name of the blood infection? And she did, and I was living in Arizona at the time and she said he's in Florida, he'll be back Friday. And she told him I don't think my client will live that long. Client will live that long. And so he called his son and had the son go over to his house and pull the medical records from his mom and get us the name of the blood infection. And we got that to my doctor and he got me on the right antibiotic and so two people I've never met saved my life that's an amazing.
Speaker 3:That's pretty amazing yeah, so my book is called over my dead body because of my near-death experience and because that's what it felt like. My body was dead and I crossed over several times and that's. You know, that's a different story having a near-death experience, but it took about 10 weeks for me to be able to walk across a room from that point and so at Christmas time I thought I've always done cleanses and house food. I started doing that in my 20s, so that was kind of a way of life for me. And the doctors told me if I wasn't in the shape I was in and had the lifestyle that I had going into this, I probably wouldn't be here. But I also had a great motivation because I didn't want to leave my daughter.
Speaker 2:Well, I was going to say you had your biggest. Why was your daughter?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I said, ok, we're going gonna do this cleanse over Christmas and get all this medication crap out of us. And and we both became severely sick and I we were in Montana for the holidays and we went back to Arizona and I went to the doctor and he said your blood infection is back. And I totally freaked out and I had read about biofilm. It was something new back then but I had studied it because every time they told me something I would go out and research it. And I was reading the research material about the blood infection and the doctor was on the phone with the pharmacist trying to figure out what to put me on and it said it had a biofilm. The blood infection had a biofilm. And.
Speaker 3:I. I knew in my gut that this was a key thing, and so I I said something to him, and I said something to him, and, and so what we figured out was the enzymes in the, the cleanse, were dissolving the biofilm. And so we did a protocol for both my daughter and myself where we paired um, we were rotating through different enzymes at the same time, we were on antibiotics and about six weeks later the Lyme was gone. It took a lot longer for the blood infection, but in February that year my daughter was in the second grade by then and she came home from school and she said, mommy, it's the best Monday of my life. And I said, why school? And she said, mommy, it's the best Monday of my life. And I said why, honey? And she said because I'm not tired. And that's when I knew that we had it that was that.
Speaker 3:That was her like going through the, the threshold, past the proverbial finish line yeah, you know, and then it did so much damage, like they told me, they didn't know if my organs would ever work right again. And so at that point we we transitioned from, you know, survival to repairing our bodies, and that took a long time as well. I mean, it was all trial and error and everything I do I've tried on myself, so you, know, I never put anything out there that I haven't done myself now, were you with all these near-death experiences?
Speaker 2:were you damning God, the universe?
Speaker 3:no, no, um, I actually, because I grew up in an abusive home and my brother his name was David, he died two weeks before his fourth birthday and I had felt him my whole life and the first time I crossed over, he was there at the beginning of the tunnel of light, and I said, oh, you're here to take me to the light. And he said, no, I'm here to tell you it's not your time, you're going back, get out of light. And I said, oh, you're here to take me to the light. And he said, no, I'm here to tell you it's not your time, you're going back, like, get out of here.
Speaker 2:Well, at least you realize, you know that, you know how, like some atheists or the agnostic, like you know, there is more to this life.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Now your brother. He died because of this abuse or did he die of natural causes?
Speaker 3:Well, I believe it's because of the abuse.
Speaker 2:Sorry to hear that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a horrible childhood. However, it made me who I am. It made me a fighter.
Speaker 2:Every you know what. What people don't realize is all, even the insignificant, or every major, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything that has leads us to you and I speaking right now based on everything. So it's funny because, like whenever somebody says would you want to change this in your life, and you'll be like no, because then my whole life? Because it is.
Speaker 2:It truly is like the butterfly effect because I mean, your, your brother was there, yeah, to tell you you get, you move forward there. You know there is everybody's time is will come, but your time's not now.
Speaker 3:You, you, you got, you got your daughter and keep on fighting and I and I really didn't want to leave her. But when you're, when your spirit leaves your body, you don't feel the pain and and the. It's hard to describe the pain that I was in with the blood infection, because I don't take pain medicine and you know that that was how I could tell whether an antibiotic was working or not was the pain level, because it would start getting better and then it would get worse. I'm like, okay, this one's not working and um, but it makes childbirth look like a broken fingernail, like that. Yeah, even my hair hurt. It was excruciatingly painful.
Speaker 2:Well, also too. I mean if, if I think about it, a lot of us go travel all over the country, just like you, regular jet setter, and most doctors aren't equipped, unless you grow up in, like you know, pennsylvania near Penn State or the New England or the Midwest. There's a lot of cases. If I went somewhere and went hiking or came back home, I could go to the best doctors here and I'm sure they would misdiagnose me and everybody would have a free-for-all giving me the wrong meds to come nowhere close to curing me, but at least the pharmaceutical rep would be happy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and. And so most of the doctors that I've talked to have said that they got maybe a couple of hours of training about Lyme disease in medical school, and most of the Lyme literate doctors are doctors who have Lyme themselves, and they became Lyme literate because they were researching things to help themselves, and most of them still have Lyme, which is the crazy part.
Speaker 2:Well, also, too, I'm sure people usually don't have empathy. So when you're doing the treatments for Lyme you and your daughter most people don't understand that it's such a long, drawn process, like, okay, marilyn, you should be better by now. You should be better by now. Yeah, what's going on here? Are you seeking attention? Because, like I said before, we started my ex-girlfriend's teenage daughter 16, 17-year-old having that and just seeing it's like what you described After you do a treatment, you actually feel worse than before and there's there's never a moment where because even when you see people going through cancer chemo, yes, there's a light at the end of the tunnel between you know it's not like, oh shit, you know this is horrible.
Speaker 2:And you feel worse and worse and worse. And there's no, you know, it's a real it's. It's like not a marathon, it's like an iron man ultra, super duper marathon. And yeah, you're like because just imagine, though, if you, if you never had that and it was just your daughter, you would be like, feeling hopeless because you're like this camp, you know when, when's this going to stop? When's when's it going to stop? Because you know we're so used to, especially now in this. You know, speedy. You know we want instantaneous results. We want the six minute abs and we want the TV dinner. And we want, you know we want instantaneous results, we want the six minute abs and we want the TV dinner. And we want, you know, we want the pill or we want the shot. That you know you and your daughter would just take a couple pills and a couple of shots and you guys would be dancing the night away a week later. And you know, if only life was that easy, right, yeah?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's later. And you know, if only life was that easy, right? Yeah, yeah, and it's. It's very complicated and I mean now I have it down to you know people do everything I asked them to do in the protocols. I can get people you know significantly better, if not well, in four to six months. Four to six months and um, but you know it's very.
Speaker 3:Everything I do is very specific and there's so many layers of complexity to this disease, like it mutates, um, into different life forms. It um, there's. They just came out with a study where they said they found 46 different DNA strands for Lyme disease and then there's about 30 different co-infections that we know of, and so you've got the Lyme mutating and all these different co-infections. And if you're not treating the form of the Lyme that it's in at that time, you're on the wrong antibiotic, and so doctors tend to put people on doxycycline forever and that only treats a couple of the forms. So the rest of the time it's a waste and it's just putting toxins in your body that your body has to deal with.
Speaker 3:And so I use an energetic. It's a different one than the one I had when we had Lyme and it is like a super diagnostic tool. It doesn't say what it is. I have to look for the patterns, and so I have three kind of three steps to healing that I use. So the first step is quite extensive and it is about preparing the body, because most people that come to me have been sick for a very long time, like I have one gal that was diagnosed when she was 13 years old.
Speaker 3:She was from New York and she's 44. Wow, I started working with her last October and so she's been sick all of these years. And you know, the first, the first thing that happened, she said I'm having daily bowel movements and she's a nurse, and and so you know we're doing the happy dance, because that's very common. The whole gut system stops working for two reasons One is that Lyme destroys it, and the other is that the doxycycline destroys your gut. That Lyme destroys it and the other is that the doxycycline destroys your gut, and so she hadn't had normal bowel movements forever. She just called me last week and said that she had her first normal period in 30 years.
Speaker 3:I never had one of those. Be grateful, trust me.
Speaker 2:I can't say that. You know that. I want to have one because you know, I think I'm a woman, but but being raised with a single mom, I I can sort of relate, and you know women and ex-wives and having two daughters, but that that's it's a huge deal yeah, it is, it is yeah it.
Speaker 3:Lime uh, makes the blood like hypervisco, so it's super thick and clotty and it's actually a biofilm. I believe in the in the blood because as we clean up and dissolve the biofilm, the blood starts correcting itself. I do quite a few things right from the beginning for the blood um, excuse me, uh and so that has to start working right. We do a lot of cleansing at first because you know there's only a limited number of ways that your body can eliminate toxins. Full your kidneys get full, your lymphatic system stops working. Even it starts showing up in your skin and your sinuses and the the reaction that people have they have. It's called herxheimer's reaction, um, and that's all of these symptoms and it's really a toxin. Overload is what happens, and when you start killing the lime it releases even more neurotoxins.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, trust me, I've seen it. And then when you're in that waiting room too and then you see other people coming, it's like holy smokes. It actually makes cancer treatment, makes like cancer treatment good. I mean, heck, I. I almost wanted to like be like the boy in the bubble after seeing that being paranoid of ticks and fleas, anything, any mosquito, please don't you know.
Speaker 2:Whatever you know, it's, it's. It's truly devastating you feeling like that for such a long period of time, when you finally got better years later, did it just? Were you so used to the pain that you couldn't remember?
Speaker 3:No, no, I no, I, I, I remembered you know, because really in the Lyme world that's not that long of a time to be sick. You know, usually people get Lyme and then they're sick for the rest of their lives and and that's, that's tragic. And so you know, I'm getting out there right now and spreading the word, you know. Know, not only is there answers, you know, I can do this pretty quickly now, you know somebody else might say, well, geez, four to six months, and that seems like a long time compared to a 10-day antibiotic protocol you know what?
Speaker 2:you forgot that to mention what's that? Championforlifecom.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:That's my website.
Speaker 3:And then my protocol is called the Lime Crusher.
Speaker 2:Because you keep on saying all these amazing things, but it's like do we have to personally call you?
Speaker 3:Do we have to send you a fax, a tele morse?
Speaker 2:code. It's, it's a. It's a great website.
Speaker 3:It truly is thank you, and and um, over my dead body is available on amazon and an ebook and a uh, a written book and it's it's not expensive. It's $9.95 for the ebook. Um, I have learned a lot since then.
Speaker 2:Uh, I'm I'm a researcher, so I do deep dives and go down rabbit holes, but I get answers, you know, and plus, you don't want to see other families. And then when you you mentioned that it was when you said the girl and you know she's in her 40s now. I thought you're when she's like, oh, she got it at nine or 10. I thought you were going to say, well, and she's 11 now. I wasn't expecting. Hey, by the way, she's only like she's only lived 90 percent of her life With this, that's to. To me it was like a knee jerk, it was like holy smokes. Yeah, that's just to live in that amount of pain, I mean yeah.
Speaker 3:But as you start healing, though, um the the symptoms start going away. Like I remember one day, um, I I used to go into the office and close all the shades because I had a migraine for so long. And one day I went in the office, you know, and then the cleaning crew opened them. So I went in the office and I was looking out the window thinking about something and then I I was like wait a minute, I don't have my blinds closed and I'm not, you know, crawling into a corner like some, you know something that you see on the cartoons. And and then it dawned on me. I said I don't have a headache, you know.
Speaker 3:So it was like a realization, and, with the neuropathy in my feet, I was up on Capitol Hill doing hill visits all day and we were walking to dinner a group of us and I said, oh, my feet hurt. And I went, oh, wait, a minute, my feet hurt Like normal and I'm like doing the happy dance, I'm jumping for joy, going. You guys, my feet hurt and they're all looking at me like I've lost my mind there and they're going well, because you know we can't, yeah, I felt my feet in years and it was normal pain and you know.
Speaker 3:And I got my hearing back, I got my eyesight back like I. I got my memory back and everything started coming back. And I got my strength back, like I.
Speaker 2:I went skiing last month and and that was something that for years, that was just a, a faded memory. That was like a yeah, someone else that was a lifetime ago that you're like you. You probably thought, especially before you're diagnosed, you're like yeah that'll, that's the old me.
Speaker 3:That'll never happen, never again yeah, and, and the first time I skied after I, I got well and I was with one of my girlfriends I'd grown up with and I got to the top of the mountain and just started bawling and she said why you crying? I thought you'd be happy and I and I said you know it's hard to describe Like I, I never thought I'd be able to do that again and you know that's what drives my passion. And you know I don't need clients for a lifetime. I'm not into the. I'm going to keep somebody on drugs forever. That's not who I am.
Speaker 2:Well, you definitely couldn't have a pharmaceutical company then. Oh, no, not at all.
Speaker 3:I hate those things. I have to use them to get people all the way through the process. So I have to work with doctors so that they can get them on the right medications with doctors so that they they can get them on the right medications. But my my goal is to get people feeling great as soon as I can so that they can go out and start living their lives and and having joy again and it's also crazy that most people think lyme disease is something like leprosy or it's something that you read about, that it can't be.
Speaker 2:Nobody has it. But in reality, not only is there a lot of people going through it, but it's like what you said so many people living undiagnosed, just living in severe pain for the rest of their life.
Speaker 3:To me that's no zero quality of life there and they lose hope because they feel like there's never going to be any answers. And so some things in the last year, because a year ago May is Lyme Awareness Month. So a year ago the CDC redefined the diagnosis criterion for Lyme disease and the cases shot up by 70%. And I thought, okay, the government has been hiding this for decades, why all of a sudden are they out there promoting it? And I started digging. So and I knew this part already. But the original Lyme disease was used for as a bioweapon.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 3:In the 70s. Yeah so Lyme, connecticut, is right outside of Plum Island and the first diagnoses were seven children laying in the forest around the laboratory and um. And then it spread from there and before COVID it was the fastest growing epidemic in six continents. Wow. So you know it's a really big deal. But I thought why have they been hiding this and saying it doesn't exist? And all of you know this negative behavior. And now, all of a sudden, they're talking about it. So you know it has to be a reason right. And, by the way, anthony fauci was involved in the project at plum island.
Speaker 2:No way no way that that, that not possible I know it's so shocking anyway no way.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I don't want to get into politics.
Speaker 2:Now I'll have a sleep. I can't believe that Of all the names, I would have never thought you would have named him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, he was in there. So I started digging and what I found out is that they are getting ready to release a vaccine for Lyme disease, which is absolutely absurd, because it's like viruses With the vaccines for viruses a lot of times they don't work because they have to guess at how the virus is going to mutate, and if they don't guess right, the vaccine is not effective. And Lyme has all these different life forms and so you know, be nearly impossible. And the only reason it hasn't been released yet is because they haven't been able to figure out how to test what will happen if somebody is given the vaccine when they already have Lyme disease. So it increased the number of diagnoses there were by 70%. However, it's not a full diagnosis, like it doesn't cover everybody.
Speaker 3:So the statistics that you hear about the number of cases, are determined by whatever the definition was at the time. So there's a lot more cases than there used to be just because they changed the criterion. But it doesn't cover everybody and so they haven't figured out that part of it, and it's actually mortifying to me to think that they're going to be pushing a vaccine about this. From what I am seeing is that once it's introduced, if you don't go through very, very rigor, rigorous, immediate treatments, that you, it will just grow, and and so they know that a vaccine, so possibly just a money grab too, though just like well, that's my personal opinion, um you know not not like the, the, the vaccine for um corona, since that that's highly effective along with the, the flu vaccine yeah, well not not that they their money grabs at all.
Speaker 3:You know, my oldest business is 35 years old and I've actually documented it just for my personal information over the years, and the people who got the flu vaccine are the ones that were sick, and so we've actually gotten several awards with my company in Arizona for being one of the healthiest employers, because I provide things for my employees to do that keep them well in the first place, and it's cut down on our PTO, but we've won awards for this.
Speaker 2:This sounds like common sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I would rather prevent something than have to put a fire out.
Speaker 2:You know yeah but we always have it backwards here we're like, let's make sure you have it, because then this way we can prescribe something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for maintenance at least, to say the least. And this is not the disease to be playing with. Oh no, not, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's it. I think it's usually because I looked like when I said leprosy, because if something's out of sight it's out of mind, so it's not real until you actually see somebody that has it. Or going through the treatments and and seeing the just the transformation of anybody, whether it's a child or an adult, you literally become a different, a different person. Just based on everything, your personality. You can be the most happy-go-lucky person and then, just with the brain fog and your personality, well, one I don't know anybody that's going to be a shiny, happy person when they're in severe pain, nonstop either yeah, person when you know they're in severe pain non-stop yeah, either yeah, yeah, and and most of the pain medicines don't do a lot of for it.
Speaker 3:but some of the the other things that I want to make sure to cover, because it's important for people to understand, is that it can be sexually transmitted. The Lyme bacterium is a spirochete, which is the same type of pathogen that syphilis is.
Speaker 2:That's a bummer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's something that's been hidden for many years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Believe it or not? I never knew that.
Speaker 3:They just started releasing that information out of the CDC, like a year ago. They also are just now admitting that it passes in utero.
Speaker 2:Well, you know yeah.
Speaker 3:I know that for sure because that's how my daughter got it. That's why you have whole families that have this, and so if you are with somebody who has Lyme disease, then you know you've got to treat the couple or they'll just give it back and forth to each other. They'll never get rid of it if you're not treating both people and the same thing with the children. You know you're like I have whole families that that are sick, and so if you're only treating one person at a time, you have to be very careful and take a lot of precautions. So it can be done, but the best method is for everybody to go everybody to go through the treatment at the same time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I. I recently had a couple um, they've been married um about four years and I've been treating her for a while and and then at one point, and her husband came with her. Every time she came to see me and they were in Arizona, which is why I got to see her in person. I treat people all over the world and I don't have to see them in person. However, they were in Arizona and he would come with her every time and he was so supportive and so loving and she said you know, every time we have sex, my husband gets sick.
Speaker 3:And I was like, oh no. And I there was no easy way for me to tell him and I said I why you're here today, I want to run a scan on you. And he said I've never been bit by a tick. And I said we need to trust me, we need to do a scan on you.
Speaker 3:And and he had everything and he, his health had started going downhill and for him, you know, he was like I'm the man of the house, I'm supposed to be here to help my wife, I want to be supportive of my wife, and now I'm sick too. And he had to admit, um, you know how, how bad he was feeling himself, and so it took him a little while to, you know, embrace that, because I, you know, I'm obviously not a man, but to him it represented his manhood in a way, and so when he finally did, he said, okay, we have to get through this. And so he's now also being treated. She's quite a bit further along than he is, so now that she's starting to get well, she's supporting him. So they've kind of switched roles and um, but you know, it's important for people to know that, and if you're not going to be treated at the same time, then then practice safe sex, because it's not worth it and social distancing right three feet uh, yeah, well, that was so effective, um, but yeah, you just have to be.
Speaker 3:You know it's, it's, it's in every part of your body, it's in your body fluids also. So, sharing a, sharing a drink, you know anything like that, and and I don't know if that for sure is a way that you can catch it, um, well, I take the rest, I know. Well, I mean, you're taking a chance.
Speaker 3:I know for sure that body fluids like sexually transmitted and giving birth to your child is that that is a for sure thing. However, I would either treat everybody or be very, very cautious, because it's just not worth taking a risk.
Speaker 2:Well, something like that. I would say it's a no, why would you want to? Well, I'll start treatment nine months. You know why? Why not just have everybody do it all at the same time instead of, you know, prolonging the agony for the family, because you're still going to prolong psychological, emotional and someone's still going to be physically in pain longer than the others if he or she took longer to start the treatments.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the mutations don't happen in the same order for everybody. So even if you start at the same time, you might not be on the same protocol. So, like one person's infection might turn parasitic while another one there's a form called granulomas and those require two different protocols. Um, so, and and during that phase. So the first phase is where we clean people up and get rid of the opportunistic infections, which is things like parasites, viruses, those type of things. So we want to build the body up before we start killing the main pathogens, so your immune system can support that process better and your detox pathways are open and we actually do the detox all the way through this. And then you know we have to take a lot of things into consideration, like when you're dissolving a biofilm, you anything can come out, and so we have to have extensive knowledge about what somebody's had before, like if somebody has had sepsis before that could be hiding in there. So I have to work with the doctors and get all of these antibiotics on hand. So if something like a blood infection, like what I had, or sepsis or something that's like critical, could kill you, that they are, they have the antibiotic already. So if that comes out and shows up that we can nail it right away. And so we do scans every two weeks I have done every week in some cases, depending on you know what their medical history is and we identify what's going on right now and you know, rotate through those things that are best for whatever the right now is and it's different for everybody. So when people are like, well, just tell me what to do, and like I can't without scanning you, I can't without you, know a tremendous amount of information, and so that's that's a critical stage.
Speaker 3:And and then after that we start repairing the body and repairing the immune system. Because right after you get rid of these pathogens, most people have been sick for so long. Their immune system is like overreactive, so they might get a common cold and all of a sudden they have a 104 fever and their body's going crazy because their body's like, oh no, we're sick again and it overreacts. It doesn't match what's actually happening in the body. So we have to kind of reprogram your body to act normally, because it's not going to know how. So that's the last part of what we do is repairing the body and getting everything to work the way it's supposed to work, and that all happens in the four to six month period instead of years. You know, I took a lot longer to get to that point because I was experimenting on myself.
Speaker 2:Exactly Now. I mean, you didn't even know what you had for years. So and now? That's why I love the name champion for life which you are. You're an entrepreneur, you're a mother, you're a survivor, you're author and you help people frigging get over this disease.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why suffer for years or decades? When you talk about, I mean, giving people quality of life. That's an amazing thing. So definitely I would, you know, once again, everybody champion for life. Mary Lou, yeah, mary Lynn, you got the. That's just an amazing story overall.
Speaker 3:Thank you Can I just give one update my daughter I wanted to say my daughter, my daughter's 24.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you read my mind. That was my next question. What's the update on your daughter? How is she? What is she doing all these years later?
Speaker 3:So she just turned 24. She graduated from college a year ago with honors and she's working out in the gym and she is she. She just went through her second interview for a promotion at work. She's um and it's with lamb cone and um and she's doing great and you know living her, living her life living her life without pain and being a survivor and an inspiration.
Speaker 2:Because there's people like what you said. There's people out there 20, 30, 40 years into it still doing that. So that's a great story. She graduated college, hopefully an entrepreneur one day, like mom. So what words do you have to tell anybody? And it's not just Lyme disease, it's any autoimmune disease or any disease that debilitating that you know that. I mean, I know autoimmune, but anything, any chronic illness. What words of wisdom do you have to tell that person that sometimes just feels defeated or just feels like maybe this, this is it.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, that's the wonderful thing about science is that we are learning things all the time. I've learned a tremendous amount of information since I published my book four years ago a tremendous amount of information since I published my book four years ago. And you know, you have to advocate for yourself and dig and research and don't just take somebody else's word for it. Like, I really encourage my clients and I explain everything to them because I want them to understand why we're doing what we're doing, but you really have to be an advocate for your own health because nobody else is going to fight for you like you.
Speaker 3:You know so don't give up and there are answers. And you know there's only so much time in the day for me to help people myself, but I am documenting everything and I am going to, in the future, be opening up the Lyme disease centers of America and I am writing the training program for that right now. I didn't realize how extensive everything was, so much was in my head. So now that I'm writing it down, I'm like holy smokes, this is a lot. So, um, you know, I know I I love helping people and and my goal is just to get as many people better that as I can.
Speaker 2:Well, don't lose hope you are doing the good fight and you know you're kicking kicking lyme disease right in the butt. Thank you for the time.
Speaker 3:That's what they call me Hammer Time.
Speaker 2:Exactly, you got the name, multiple names, and you are Champion for Life, just like your store, just like your website. So, champion for Life, order the book Over my Dead Body Talk about. I'm going to do it just because I want to read the story. You're an inspiration. Thank you for being a guest, thank you for the hour, and I'm glad you and your daughter have a happy ending and I'm so glad that you're helping others find that quality of life.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. It's been awesome. Thank you for the opportunity for a long time to make you happy, you gotta take action. Just imagine what if it did work.