Let's help Angel fight Lyme Disease

Angel is a mother, a wife, an artist, a musician and a dear friend who’s been suffering from a huge range of excruciating symptoms her entire adult life due to her 21 year battle with Lyme disease. Insurance companies DO NOT cover the majority of Lyme treatment, and her life has become incredibly expensive as she tries to inch her way towards a better quality of life for herself and her family. She is deep in debt and struggling to survive. Knowing this sweet woman means knowing that she truly deserves our help!

I’ve known Angel since 2004, after she and one of our close friends fell in love, (a friend who she is now married to, but can no longer live with her due to her disease and her body’s weakened immune system.) She is one of those people who you meet and immediately adore. She has such an open and kind heart, a positive attitude, a strong work ethic, and an ever-inquisitive and creative mind, and the hand that she has been delt just doesn't seem fair....

Angel was infected with Lyme disease in 1995 at the age of 19 while attending her first year at UCSC. After a tick bite, followed by two weeks of flu-like symptoms, Angel asked a doctor if she had Lyme disease. He told her not to worry since there was no red ring around her bite, and there were no known cases in California. That doctor was wrong, and it took Angel 16 years of mysterious, seemingly unrelated, remitting and progressing symptoms, to finally receive the correct diagnosis. By that time her entire central nervous system and body had begun to shut down after being sick for so long without any proper treatment. After 4 long years of intensive triple antibiotic therapy, combined with herbs and homeopathics, she suffered liver and kidney failure. After completeing 5 years of full-time treatment the Lyme and co-infections still persist. Angel remains debilitated from this disease, and is fighting to get some quality of life back with alternative therapies. After being bedridden for 3 years, she can now walk again, but she still goes through stages where she can’t get out of bed for days at a time, and is beginning to need more daily help.

In addition to Lyme and many co-infections, Angel has been dealing with biotoxin illness from hidden mold exposure, and from the neurotoxins of the Lyme die-off from treatment. She has a few gene anomolies that do not allow her to clear these toxins from her system easily. Modern living and modern architecture have become impossible for her, as she can no longer go into normal buildings without a respiratory mask on.

She now lives in an aluminum trailer, that has saved her life, allowing her to walk and sit up again, giving her a space to live, love and create from. It is specially built not to mold or rot, and will be a safe space for her throughout her life, as Lyme and Mold will be ongoing challenges. Angel, with the help of her husband, has to keep moving her studio on wheels every few weeks, as she has no property of her own to park it on. Each move causes days of exhaustion after exerting so much energy. It feels impossible for her move even a muscle sometimes with this disease. Yet, her will is strong, and she keeps getting herself back up to live, to love, to create, and to give back to the world in every way she can.

Angel is deep in financial debt, while there are so many things that she still needs to purchase to survive; from healthy food, to western and herbal medicines, to having a place to park her trailer that has electricity, water and sewer connections, to covering her monthly payment for the trailer itself. 

My goal is raise enough to get her out of debt, and to give her a downpayment for a small piece of property in the countryside where she can manage her symptoms with more ease. All Angel wants is to be closer to those she loves, with a home base to make her art and music so that she can share her creations with the world, and be cared for by people who love her like family.

You can purchase her beautiful, handmade, electroformed jewelry from her Etsy site: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PearlBoxStudios
(Use coupon coude 'pearl' for 15% off.) She is also slowly beginning to write a book about her life with Lyme in hopes of raising awareness about the disease and helping others who are fighting the same battle.

Let’s help her do that with a donation today. Absolutely anything would help, there is no donation too small. It is a time for giving - giving thanks for what we have, giving love and attention to the ones we love, and giving what we can to those in need. Angel needs some quality of life and health back, I know that collectively we can help her gain that!