*update. I can't change the suggested amount. Ignore the numbers and feel free to send $5 if that's what works for you!*

Hello! My name is Jacob. Songwriter poet. Cerebral empath (deep thinker and feeler), at your service.

Alas, I am ill! I have been ill for 7 years. I have so much I want to do, but I am disabled by pain and illness.

I have songs to write to and stories to tell. I have justice and mercy to attend to. I have gifts of music and writing, talents to employ for the building up of community and the Church. I've created a show of all original music and poetry that people said was deeply affective and enriching and unique. I keep getting told that I have so much to offer the world. Why has God not also given me health so that I can employ the talents? I have people to serve and love. But I am held back by diffuse muscle pain and nausea, crushing fatigue, and fever. Brain fog! Bleh

Beyond my sense of vocation, I also just want to be able to go on hikes on the weekend! I go on, like, one or two hikes a year these last number of years. The toll is significant on my body. I'm usually not able to go.

I would love also to reliably be able to go out with friends, but I find myself flattened by nausea, brain fog, and fever on many/most evenings.

I want to be able to study and work! I had to pull out of school. I have had a lot of false starts in my attempts at work and vocation, as my body rebels, in these last 7 years. I've accomplished a few things, but my momentum routinely fails and I have to fall back into pain management mode.

I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2018 and have lived with that diagnosis since then. September of that year saw the onset of disabling diffuse muscle pain, nausea, brain fog and fatigue. I pulled out of school and an internship.

Fibromyalgia is a curious diagnosis. It feels like a medical cop-out. There is no treatment, but there is pain management skills, which are great to learn.

Chronic illness, lasting years, wreaks havoc on your sense of self and security. Everything is harder. Living is harder. Scarcity of self accrues. Even when you do make it out to social things, you feel hollow, and then you pay dearly with symptoms flaring in the next series of days. Showing up cost so much.

It's another complexity when you don't look sick but are. "Invisible Illness," it's called. People are baffled that you are so disabled when you look fine. Some think you're crazy. You wonder yourself if they are right.

Through the struggle, disability taught me self-compassion and humility. It forced me to confront my sources of identity and choose life despite disadvantage and distress. Am I valuable apart from my performance? What is a life? Deep questions with precious answers. Bright instances of heaven in the wilderness. Running with Fibromyalgia disability has been an important journey. I wrote a book of poetry.

This last year, however, with the onset of newer symptoms, or rather with the intensifying of symptoms and the emergence of persistent low-grade fever and dizziness, I pursued more healthcare.

Once again the medical system provided dead ends and professional shrugs. "We can't see anything wrong with you," (besides unexplained anemia), was a persistent refrain.

I sought alternative health care. One naturopathic doctor offered me only supplements and incredulous looks.

Another doctor at another clinic in Vancouver, however, a Dr. Mukai, took me seriously and I felt instantly validated. I felt seen in a way I had not yet been by any of the fleet of physicians I had seen over the years. Her clinic concerns itself mainly with tickborne infections: Babesia, Borrelia (Lyme), Bartonella, and other bugs. I'd been told before that my symptoms sound like Lyme so I thought I'd check it out.

She explained that these bugs, especially when they have been in your body for a long time and if there are multiple of them synergizing with one another—these bugs have dastardly clever ways of masking themselves and hiding from your immune system.

After a few tests, a test for Babesia came back positive! I wept in the office with relief. Observing the way I have responded to treatment and observing my symptoms, Dr. Mukai suspects a version of Lyme may also be at play. It hasn't showed up in tests, yet, but she explained that if your immune system is suppressed then tests which rely on immune marker responses to the infection might offer false negatives. A certain marker in my blood does suggest immune suppression.

Most people that have Babesia also have Lyme. It's possible I am among those. In any case, I have Babesia, or Babesiosis, the infection.

It's a blood parasite and it is compared to malaria. It is actually often treatment with the same agents. It would explain my persistent anemia which I've had for many years and is not an iron deficiency.

My brain fog, fatigue, chronic low grade fevers, the pressure in my head and dizziness, my "air hunger" and chest pain and involuntary twitching—these make sense in the context of a Babesia infection and maybe Lyme.

(Maybe the infection explains the whole 7 years of pain. Many Lyme patients are [mis]diagnosed by the mainstream system as having Fibromyalgia. Perhaps, perhaps not. I do not know when they tick found me.)

The tests were costly and the treatments are costly. I feel embarrassed even mentioning the thousands of dollars, but, my friends, it costs thousands of dollars.

This is my humble appeal: If you would be so moved would you help me pay for some months of treatment and perhaps some of the costs which I have already paid? Many costs are presently squatting—in an entitled and hostile manner—in my line of credit. I want to them evicted. But, upcoming costs are the priority.

Treatment, for a few months involving IV's, will be over $2000 a month.

The other layers of the treatment are herbal tinctures targeting the bug, antibiotics against the bug, probiotics, support supplements, and a gnarly anti-parasitic called atovaquone, a months supply of which costs $500. Then there is the cost of appointments. Blood tests are another expense. The initial screening was $3000.

*Sigh*

If it would please you to help me along in my pursuit of health, thank you. I am in the Lord's hands in any case. My life is hidden in him.

Do pray that the treatment is effective, also. Pray also that I heal through this along with all the things of life that foster health. Pray for a miracle. I want to be well. I want to make music and play and serve and live.

I feel that this could be a pivot point. I've been given some assuring words of hope and possibility. I've been encouraged to dream that perhaps I could be healthy again, and do those hikes, and be able to work and write the songs burning in my gut and engage in the advocacy simmering in me. I want to see the world healthier. I want to see the Church healthier.

Initial results from the treatment have been promising. I've hit some snags but that is not unusual. People I've met who've been treated for Babesia or Lyme say their treatment took over a year, but that health is possible. Treatment effectiveness is usually not perfectly linear. Patients, apparently, will have to watch out for its re-emergence after getting healthy, but it should be easier to deal with if it does.

I am hopeful. Please consider helping me out, if you are able.

Grace and peace,

Jacob

Photo: me and my friend Stephen from Boston on the first of two hikes I enjoyed this year.

Paypal, another giving avenue: https://paypal.me/voiceofjacob.