It wasn’t like I woke up one day and just thought to myself, “wow, this is a great day to start feeling sick and weak”, no it just kind of happened. Maybe you have a similar story. Over the course of a few years I started to notice things going sideways or more accurately straight up downward… While in college I had the first major injury of my life, I tore my ACL while playing in my intramural playoff basketball game. I will always remember how it felt that day and how it really was the starting point on my journey with Lyme Disease and Mold Sickness. That day and even the days after that, and even the months after that I didn’t think much of it. I have always been a positive person and never assumed the worst would happen. I always was grateful for life and kept moving forward day after day with a positive mindset. Never before did I ever have to put limits on myself physically or mentally or socially. I never had to question things, and I never had to worry that something would cause me pain. It’s really crazy when I think back to it because I went to the emergency room immediately after it happened and I knew something was wrong but the ER doctor there did a “test” on my knee and told me he did not think it was torn. They gave me a set of crutches and I went home to my apartment like nothing had even happened. In that moment, I didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of gloom, or even start to think ahead about what to do. I didn’t tell my parents or my friends because quite frankly it didn’t feel like something I had to worry about. He told me it probably wasn’t torn. Over the next few days, I couldn’t put any pressure on it and my friends even had to help me get into the shower… A month or so went by, I finished my semester at college and went back home to live with my parents for the summer. At that point I knew I needed to get an MRI but still I was not worried and I didn’t think it was torn. Flash forward to my second time meeting with Dr. Raab and him telling me the results of my exam. I sat there in the waiting room with my mother, honestly I don’t know why I brought her along, not because it was bad that she was there but why wouldn’t I just go by myself. Anyway, I sat there and he didn’t say anything else to me besides, “the MRI says your ACL has been torn” and then he went into a long explanation about what surgery options were and what my choices would mean long term. I blacked out and stopped listening as soon as he told me my ACL was torn. I was shocked my ACL was torn. All I was doing was playing basketball with a few friends, its not like I am a top notch NBA athlete jumping 40 inches into the air every few moments to grab a rebound over a 7’0″ freak like Rudy Gobert. Even in that moment and even for the next year I felt really positive. I thought about all the other athletes who tore their ACL and came back after a year like nothing had ever happened. I knew I could get the surgery, focus on my rehab and I would be all good.
Surgery Options
When I spoke with Dr. Raab I made it very clear my goal at the end of surgery and rehab was to play sports again. He knew that and recommended we go with a cadaver surgery since he told me it would be less invasive. He informed me I would have no issues whatsoever getting back into sports with that surgery. I later found out that a cadaver surgery while less invasive since they don’t have to take your quadriceps tendon to use as a graft, tends to not do as well for athletes. So I got the surgery done and went my full year of rehab. I did everything they asked of me and I was asking for more and more exercises and workouts to make sure my knee was all good. A year later, I went up to the courts where I played before and I was feeling confident, I was ready to give it a shot. I saw a few guys playing 2v2 that I didn’t think looked very good so I decided to give it a try and play a 3v3 game with them and my friend who was with me at the time. All went well and just like I thought they weren’t very good. After that I was feeling damn good and walked over to the middle of the 3 courts. Everyone who played there knew the middle court was considered the “best” court, where all the best games happened. Every weekday and especially on the weekends there would be pickup games happening on all 3 courts but when you stared at the middle court and saw everyone crowded around it and lines of teams ready to go, you knew where you wanted to be at. That specific day it was a Saturday afternoon and not too many people there quite yet. One game happening on the middle court and a few guys standing around waiting to play so me and my buddy put together a team and got ready to play next. The game came around and everything felt good, I was running around guarding people and taking my shots. Towards the end of the game I had to switch onto this one guy, I had seen him up there a lot. He got a screen set for him and I had to switch and guard him at the top of the key above the 3-point line. He did a few size ups going between his left leg a few times and then I could tell he was going to take a slight step backwards and pull the shot. Right away I reacted and went to step up and contest but when I planted my left leg something twisted and I knew it just wasn’t right. He ended up hitting that shot and ended the game. I walked/limped over the bleaches and I knew something was up, I felt like in that moment I tore it again. I walked home and it was okay but boy was it swollen just like the first time I tore it.
At the time I was living on the 3rd floor of an apartment and it was brutal. Every time I would try to go down the steps after I reinjured it, it would buckle on me. I don’t think you can understand what it feels like unless you have had it happen to yourself but I will try. Basically, it’s like your mind playing tricks on you. Because when your knee buckles and something isn’t right on the inside, your brain makes you feel like your knee is just going to keep twisting and twisting and give out but eventually it snaps back to where it was before. Physically your knee is not giving out on you because you can still stand. But it really does feel like your knee is going to fall apart and twist into nothing. I went a few weeks like this, got the MRI done and yup just like I thought the doctor told me I had a partial tear in the ACL that was reconstructed a little over a year ago. He told me it would heal itself and I just need to give it a few months. I went the next couple months with it buckling on me time and time again. Over and over again I had to experience that feeling and limit myself physically. Mainly I just wanted to stay at home. After about a month of this, I decided to get it checked out by a new doctor, a better doctor.
When I first met Dr. V it was quite a revelation. Before this moment, I felt like I could trust all doctors and they all cared about what they were doing. I showed up to my first appointment with him, with the same MRI I showed Dr. Raab and they first thing he said to me was
“Hey where did you get this MRI done? I can’t even read it, it’s so blurry. You will have to get one done with our MRI machines.”
So I agreed to go get the MRI done and came back for my second appointment. Right when he walked into the appointment with his Physician Assistant and he had kind of a solemn feel to him. Like he was about to break terrible news to me. He explained that was ACL was indeed torn again and that my Meniscus was torn as well and needed to be repaired. He actually sat there and apologized to me for the state that my knee was in. The incision hole was far off from where it should have been and overall he acted like my knee was a complete mess. A mess he could fix but a mess nevertheless. The first step was getting a bone graft put in so he could later on do the ACL reconstruct and meniscus fix. I had to let the bone graft heal for 3 months with no pressure placed on it and then go back for the ACL reconstruction and meniscus. So everything went well surgery wise. Dr. V did what he was supposed to and got the surgery done. Now ahead of me I had another year of recovery, pain, and rehab to get my knee back to where it was supposed to me. Another year of rehab, after just finishing a year of rehab before and 3 months of waiting around for the bone graft. I will say at this point I didn’t feel as positive as I once did before in my life. I still had hope for the future and I knew I would come back to sports but being so physically limited started to weight on me. As disappointed in myself as I am to admit this, I started to let it take my joy away. I couldn’t stand for long periods of time for years. I couldn’t dance the way I wanted to or act the way I wanted to for fear that I would get hurt or do damage to my knee again. Sometimes all I wanted to do was stay at home. Either way I fought through and did all the rehab I needed to for the next year. From the time I got this second surgery to the time I actually played basketball again it was from November 25, 2020 until October 2022. About a year after I got the ACL surgery done, the summer after I graduated in 2021, I was feeling rather good and decided I could start really working out and getting back to being active with no worries. In that summer of 2021, I was working out doing some tricep pushdowns with about 40 pounds and boom my left arm got “caught” when I was pushing down and caused me a large amount of pain. I immediately stopped working out and went home. The second of my major injuries.
It took my a while to figure this out because I kept thinking it would get better, but I ended getting an MRI and the doctor told me I had a partially torn triceps tendon. For a while I went from doctor to doctor and they kept telling me the only thing they could do for me is get a surgery. I firmly didn’t think I needed a surgery and even though I didn’t know what other options there could be I knew there was something else for me. So about a year later I found a doctor who gave me a different option. He said he we can do dry needling and a PCP injection and then let you do physical therapy from there to fix the partial tear. Basically the dry needling stabs the spot where its torn to promote blood flow and healing. Luckily it worked for the most part. I went from not being able to even turn the steering wheel with my left arm to being mostly functional again. To this day it’s still not as strong as I would like it and my triceps feels tight depending on how I bend it but it’s much better than before. Right around this same time is when I started to have a whole bunch of other symptoms not related to my knee or triceps. I started having headaches every single day, increasing in severity as months and months passed. I started getting fatigued and being tired all the time. My body felt like it couldn’t put out the same energy it used to. It felt like and still feels like my muscles and and being bogged down and limited by something. I started having terrible pain in my hand, wrists and thumb. And I started having terrible head throbbing as well. At some point I realized that all this wasn’t normal so I decided to see a functional doctor in July of 2023 and I was told I had Lyme Disease in September of 2023. Today is May 22nd, 2025 and for the past almost 2 years now I have been fighting the good fight to rid myself of this Lyme Disease. However, its not only Lyme Disease that has been playing games with me and trying to steal my joy. Later on in my treatment we did some more testing and found out I am having issues with Mold as well. Every since September of 2024 now I have been taking Mold Binders and other things to rid my body of the mold. At this point it seems like I have gotten all the Lyme out of my body and I just have the Mold left to deal with. The only other symptom I forgot to mention is the tendonitis in my left ankle. In January of 2023 before I knew what was wrong with me and that I had issues, I was playing intramural basketball again. I trained and trained the best I could, lifting and running every day but it didn’t matter. I rolled my ankle in one of the games, kinda like I always have but this time it didn’t get better. Usually I would give it some time and it would bounce back but as time went on I got worse and worse. It hurts all the time, while I am driving and even when I am just sitting or laying on the couch. Injured nearly two years ago and still giving me problems. I tried to do some physical therapy for it but I was feeling so shitty from all the medicines and all the head throbbing that when I tried to do the exercises I just didn’t have the energy and it made me feel worse.
So now you are all caught up to where I find myself today. I still like to consider myself a positive person or at least I thought I was in the past but this mold and lyme disease has made me into a different person. A shell of my former self. Never in my life have I experienced so many negative thoughts, and felt such little hope. Once we get out of this apartment and I remove myself from the mold I should get much better and I pray my brain and my head bounces back as well, but this stuff is no joke. I have tried so many different things and I do believe they help in their own ways. The biggest thing for me and the thing that has helped me the most is actively trying to be grateful. My brain spends so much time thinking about what I can’t do anymore. How I can’t enjoy playing basketball right now, how I can’t even enjoy a conversation with a friend because I can’t focus on what their saying. So it really helps to force my brain to be grateful for things that no one really thinks about like waking up each day and being able to see the sunlight. For feeling the rain and the wind hit your body on a cold and dark day. For the hour throughout the day where you do feel good before having a rough next 12 hours. I hope you stay with me along this journey and understand just like I do that we need to satisfy our soul not society. It’s so important to know where your expectations come from and to understand if they are important or not. With social media, with ads and everything else, there’s a expectation for what is fun and what people are expected to do in society but that may not apply to you. Take yourself for what you are and really get to know yourself in this time of healing. It’s important to know your body and to strengthen your mind through gratitude.