What’s Up Doc?? 

While Tyler and I were visiting my mom for Christmas break (2015), we all visited my regular doctor in The Bahamas and mentioned our concern to him. He agreed that Lyme could be a possibility and he decided to order the “generic” acute Lyme Disease tests. A few weeks went by and it came back negative. We decided, after doing some research, that this test was not enough.

My mom knew of a family friend, Jen, who had been struggling with Lyme Disease for over 10 years. My mom reached out and asked about doctors and facilities she had been to.

Jen pointed us in the direction of Holtorf Medical Group. This company has a few facilities in California where Jen eventually got treatment, but she knew that a new office had recently opened up right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. The office was about 5 hours from Charleston, where I was living at the time. With this information my mom took action.

She called every day until she got ahold of someone and got me the earliest possible appointment. In January 2016, Tyler, my mom, and I were headed to Atlanta for my appointment. I was so nervous. I couldn’t eat much that day. Tyler and I drove to Charleston and picked my mom up at the Atlanta Airport, we got lunch, and then headed to the doctor’s office.

After waiting a while, we got in and began to talk to Dr. Bullington about my symptoms. I gave her a symptom log I had kept for the past month and she too thought Lyme might have been an option. After all the talking, it was time for blood work and other tests. I had to do a few tests that involved breathing and reflex response to check my thyroid. When it came time for my blood work, the in-house phlebotomist took out about 30 collection tubes, labeled them, and began to do her thing. Then my blood stopped flowing, which was super frustrating. The doctor’s office was freezing and I hadn’t really eaten much, which were all contributing factors. They had to give me instant heat packs to warm up my hands and they made me drink a ton of water. After about an hour and a half the blood draw was finally over!

I then had to wait for the tests to all come back and for the doctor to have an opening in her schedule.

In March 2016, Tyler and I returned to Atlanta. We went over all of my results and pinpointed deficiencies and malfunctions. My Igenex test came back “inconclusive,” which Dr. Bullington said could have been contributed to the monocyclin I had been on for over a year to help keep my acne in check. She still suspected Lyme disease and treated me based on her clinical diagnosis. She pointed out a long list of deficiencies and concerns, some of which included an adrenal deficiency, an immune system deficiency, an iron deficiency, GI issues, and a dysfunctional thyroid that was resulting in me burning less than 1000 calories a day.

Once we went over everything I was prescribed two antibiotics, sleeping meds, anti-fungul medication, prescription vitamin D, a pain reliever, cortisol, thyroid medication, and a heap load of supplements.

All of this equated to about 20 pills a day.

I did get an nutrient IV treatment as well. Due to the fact that I lived 5 hours away the only treatment I could really do was oral medication; I could not do the ozone therapy, IV treatments, etc.

Moving forward, I had blood work and a phone appointment every three months. Dr. Bullington and I would review my labs and add, take away, or tweak any of the medications and/or supplements I was on.

In October 2016, I decided I really had not been feeling much improvement. My pain was still unbearable some days and especially at night. I was then taken off Doxycylin and the other antibiotic I was on and put on three new antibiotics. Dr. Bullington also established that there was a high chance I had Bebesia, one of the many co-infections that can also be passed on by a tick in conjunction with Lyme Disease. For this she added a supplement. She explained that she wanted to try and fight the Bebesia naturally before adding another prescription.

The following three months my lab indicators for Bebesia increased, which indicated that the supplement was not working, so I was prescribed another antibiotic. By this time with new supplements and antibiotics added to my regime, my pill count went up to 30 pills a day.  This went on until my yearly face to face visit in June 2017.

Like before we went over lab work and my progress. I expressed concern about how little progress I was making and unfortunately I was told that my healing would take 10x longer than someone who lived closer to the office due to the fact that I was not able to do the other treatments they offered. This was a little discouraging.

It was not until after we got home the next day did I feel as though this was no longer the right path for me. With that being said, I will be forever grateful to Dr. Bullington and her staff for believing me, digging deeper, and trying their best to help me in any possible way.

Holtorf Medical will always hold a special place in my heart.

I had started to have neurological symptoms that I initially chalked up to the stress of moving from South Carolina to Maine. A few days later, I had finally worked up the guts to watch the documentary Under Our Skin. Although it showed a lot of extreme cases, it was eye opening because it not only helped me acknowledge the progression of my symptoms (intense brain fog, dizziness to the point of falling, the inability to find the right words to express my thoughts, some short term and long term memory loss), but it also made me realize that I needed to get more aggressive with my treatment.

I discussed my concerns with my mom and Tyler and they were both in agreement that we needed to be more aggressive. I mentioned the documentary to my mom and she expressed interest in watching. Later in that day, after Tyler and I had finished dinner, I got a call from my mom….she was crying to the point where I couldn’t understand her.

My first thought was that someone in the family had passed away. And then I could make out that she just kept saying, “I’m so sorry, Abby. I’m sorry,” as I started to cry I tried to figure out what she was so sorry about. She explained, “I’m so sorry we have not done more! We have to get you better! I’m so so sorry, Abby! We have to get more aggressive. You can’t end up like this!” With tears streaming down my face, I explained to my mom that she had done nothing wrong, we were doing what we could at that point in time and had now realized things were not working and agreed that it was time to do something different. This call….broke my heart. This was not my mom’s fault in any way and I wanted to make sure she knew that.

Thanks to some advice from a friend who lived in the New England area, we found a doctor who would be more aggressive with my treatment. Dr. Leon Hect. We made my appointment over a month in advance and intended to see him pretty soon after we had moved to Maine.

My initial plan was to see this doctor and start the aggressive treatment ASAP due to the fact that I would have a lighter load when it came time for me to start up graduate school in September to December. I would then continue on in January 2018 with another internship and finish my degree in August 2018, only three weeks before our wedding in September.

But a few weeks after I had made my appointment with Dr. Hect, my mom stumbled upon some interesting news and my plan completely changed….