Brooke Stoddard’s Lyme Hack:

“Hi, my name is Brooke Stoddard. And I’m one of the co-founders of Generation Lyme (check out my podcast interview). I was really excited when Tick Boot Camp asked me to share a Lyme hack for their Lyme Hackathon in the month of May, which is Lyme Disease Awareness Month. So here’s my Lyme hack. If you’ve recently been diagnosed with Lyme disease, I would highly recommend finding another Lyme disease patient who can be your buddy. This would be someone you trust, who can give you advice on finding an LLMD, managing a really complicated set of symptoms, and helping you think about the different treatment protocols that you have in your journey to get better. I say all of this from personal experience. I’ve had Lyme disease and Babesiosis for about 10 years and when I was initially diagnosed, I was so lucky to have two friends who are Lyme disease patients. Their names are Chad and Michael and they basically became my coaches. They were people that I could email, text, or call anytime when I had questions about finding an LLMD, managing symptoms, or thinking about the different treatment options that I might consider. I am so grateful for the help that they gave me in the early months of my own diagnosis. And so if you’ve been recently diagnosed, I hope that you can find someone like Chad and Michael to help you out. On the flip side, if you’re a Lyme disease expert at this point, I hope that you can become someone like Chad or Michael to another newly diagnosed Lyme disease patient out there. There’s obviously so much information that you can get about Lyme disease and co-infections just by Google searches or by finding information on Facebook or Instagram. But in my experience, the best information about Lyme disease comes from other Lyme disease patients. That’s my Lyme hack. Happy Lyme Disease Awareness Month and best wishes on your own road to recovery.”