Hi, my name is Jacqueline, and I have been battling Lyme Disease since I was 12. I am now 31, and still have to consider my body daily in ways many people don’t. And I’m okay with that.

I read up a lot about what’s going on in the gluten-free world, and as of late have been taking my place as someone who does not have Celiac disease in it more seriously.

See, I’ve been off of gluten since my first diagnosis of Lyme disease, when nothing was really working to make me better. In a rather progressive move (remember, this was the early nineties), my mother brought me to a “different kind of doctor”. In some ways I hated him – he took me off wheat, milk, eggs, beef, soy, sugar, corn, tomatoes, green peppers, citrus… I would sit in his office for hours while vitamins were injected intravenously. It was a really boring way to spend time as a kid.

But… within a few months… I could walk again.

Because that’s how badly Lyme hit me. For a while I could walk with crutches. Then I was wheelchair-bound. Then crutches again. I would go to school for a few hours a day, swim at the YMCA to get my joints moving, and spent most of my time in bed. I remember during one summer trip to see my sister at camp, my mom would hang my IV bag from a hook in the car to give me my doses of antibiotics. It was a mess, and as a kid it was hard to process.

Which is why I haven’t eaten gluten or milk since, and watch those other buggers in moderation. Oh, except for a bout in college my freshmen year, which kicked my ass into another flare my sophomore year which brought a whole new slew of lingering symptoms and set me on a 6-month cycle of driving the 90 minutes from class to weekly bicillin injects and picking up lots more vitamins again.

So, yeah, Lyme has stuck with me.

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