Heather Farrier Heather's Lyme Fight

I am batteling late stage Borellia (Lyme), Bartonella, and Babesia. The next step of my health journey is a 3 week stay at a detoxification clinic in Mexico. I set up this site for friends and family who want to follow along with me on this journey and also for my care team and fellow lyme warriors who are curious about this kind of treatment. I will be trying to update this site as regurarly as possible.






Health history and what led me to this next phase of my journey.


When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (the youngest at the time in MN at Sister Kenny Institute) because I has a lot of joint and back pain plus fatigue, headaches, and just felt terrible. When I was 15 I was put on a long term antibiotic for acne by a dermatologist. After a year I started to feel better but at the time no one made the connection. I lived a relatively normal life until I got pregnant with my daughter at 26. I had to have a PICC line through my pregnancy because I was so sick. Again no one thought of lyme. I was very tired and always had back and joint pains after that but attributed it to being a tired working mother. In February 23, 2011 I woke up with extreme spine pain. I though I must of injured myself somehow but had no idea how. This pain persisted and after a few days I went to my primary care doctor at the time. He said I suffered from depression and an anti-depressant would solve the pain...I thought he was CRAZY! Needless to say I sought our a spine specialist who proceeded to tell me that the pain was radiating from a pinched nerve in my neck. June 2011 I had my first cervical spine fusion and did not feel better, as a matter of fact I started to decline more. I was given steroids and the symptoms got worse. During this time I saw a neurologist who tested me for lyme and used the Mayo Clinic lab. The Elisa part of the two tier test came back positive so the doctor called me and said that I had lyme but then called me the next day to say that the second tier of the test came back negative so I DID NOT have lyme. I believed him as they used the Mayo Clinic lab.  I sought one of the best spine surgeons in MN at this point and he thought that I may have a chance of getting rid of the pain or a least a portion of it if I had a 8 level thoracic spine fusion. I was desperate so in October 2012 I had that surgery. Things went downhill fast after that and I have never been able to return to work since. My symptoms started piling on over the next year and I had trouble swallowing so they decided that I needed to have my neck fusion redone. October 2013 I had my last spine surgery and my symptoms went out of control. They included severe rashes on my back and other places, loss of vision, tremors, severe memory loss (I would get lost driving on a road I have been on many times etc), difficulty concentrating, depression from pain, extreme fatigue (I could sleep all day and all night for days or fall asleep on the floor of in a chair), and the list went on. One doctor told me that if I really had that many symptoms I would be wheeled into his office on a stretcher. I never went back to see him! Finally in May of 2014 I had a rash so severe on my back that I could hardly wear a shirt and had to use a walker to walk as the joint pain in my hips and knees were so severe. At that time my new primary care doctor gave me another lyme test. Again this doctor called me after that test to say that I had lyme and started me on 28 days of Doxy. He then called me the next day and said that I DID NOT have lyme because the second part of the test came back negative but I could take the antibiotics still if I wanted. This led me to look deeper into Lyme and I watched the documentary Under Our Skin. I cried the whole way through the movie because they were describing me. At this point I sought out a LLMD (Lyme Literate Medical Doctor) in Wisconsin Dells. He clinically diagnosed me at my first appointment and started me on a cocktail of oral antibiotics and supplements. Then my lyme test came back from IGeneX with a positive result. Two months after the first appointment he started me on a PICC line that delivered antibiotics directly to my heart. After a year and a half of treating with the LLMD in Wisconsin we decided to try one of the best LLMD's in the country, Dr Steven Harris in San Francisco CA. I have been treating with Dr Harris for the past 1 1/2 years. In January of this year I got my PICC line pulled out of my arm after having it for 2.5 years because my body was so tired. Heavy duty IV antibiotics are like chemo on your body. I am still not well and we have decided to take a very drastic step and I am leaving for a detoxification clinic in Mexico open May 20. (x-apple-data-detectors://7) I will stay at this clinic for 3 weeks. This clinic is having great results and I am hopeful that this will be what my body needs to heal. This is my next step in the journey!