Former Journalist | Tech Entrepreneur | Chronic Lyme Patient 

Early in my health journey, I believed there was one cause, one diagnosis for the constellation of symptoms that had popped up in the summer of 2007 to make my waking life miserable. Over the years, however, as I navigated a broken healthcare system and tried a number of things that caused more harm than good, I very slowly realized just how complex and multi-faceted all of this can be.

Looking back, for me the hits to my system started in 1994, playing college soccer. We were going against RIT if memory serves (which it often doesn’t) and I went up for a header and was knocked unconscious. When I came to, I was on the bench. I knew the guys next to me, but couldn’t remember their names, didn’t know who we were playing, what the score was or why I wasn’t in the game. My memory returned about 15 minutes later and was otherwise “fine”, but that was my first major TBI.

Fast forward to probably 2002 or so (I was never good at organizing my medical timeline) and I had moved out to Colorado. I was again playing soccer and took a head or maybe an elbow, never did find out, right above my eye. I didn’t lose consciousness this time around, but I slowly got nauseous, started having vision issues and my memory left me by the time I reached the hospital. Significant TBI #2.

This one I didn’t recover from nearly as quickly and actually ended up having bad Post Concussive Syndrome (PCS), which none of my providers at the time believed was real. My first introduction to medical gaslighting, well before my Lyme diagnosis.

Anyway, it took me roughly 2.5 years to mostly recover from my second concussion and get back to some semblance of normalcy. My soccer days were over, but I started to get really active again, playing a ton of volleyball, mixed in with some basketball, skiing, running, hiking and mountain biking. I was feeling good and had completed a half marathon and sprint triathlon.

Not long after the half marathon, however, I started to get cramping in the palms of my hands and soles of my feet. That slowly progressed to migratory muscle pains, mostly in my legs to start. My knee started to give out for no reason when playing volleyball and all of the sudden I couldn’t catch my breath when exerting myself.

From there, I started to get worsening GI symptoms — premature fullness, bloating, upset stomach — and a knot below my sternum which inhibited my breathing, along with consistent muscle pain, especially in my hands, legs and neck. Over time, neurological symptoms started to appear, with bilateral inner ear dysfunction, heavy brain fog, processing and memory issues, eye floaters and blurriness, mood swings (especially feelings of rage) and dizziness. Through it all, my energy levels were non-existent and the smallest chores seemed beyond me.

At its worst, probably around 2012 or so, I was having 25 – 30 waves of dizziness daily, difficulty walking (thought I had MS at that point, especially with non-specific white lesions on my MRI) and was feeling fairly helpless and hopeless.

You’ll all recognize this next part. Over the next five years I sought out any number of specialists after finally accepting my primary had no idea what was going on — ENTs, neurologists, DOs, allergists, ophthalmologists, connective tissue specialists, naturopaths, acupuncturists, etc. It’s mostly a blur. During this span though, I had put my name on the waitlist of a well-known functional medicine provider in CO, and roughly 2+ years after being on the waitlist finally got in to see her for my Lyme diagnosis.

Some 10 years had passed from my initial symptoms. Sadly a common story for many of us in this community.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the providers I’ve worked with and the protocols I’ve been on since I started on my Lyme and co-infection journey. Suffice it to say there was a lot of ‘1 step forward, 3 steps back’ and a multitude of rabbit holes. I started with antibiotics and supplementation for Lyme, eventually moving to disulfiram (before getting severe fibromyalgia) with a doc out of Montana. Then I switched to working on Babesia and Bart with another doc out of New York.

From there I changed focus a bit, moving more into the mold and CIRS realm and working with a different doctor in CO on the Shoemaker protocol. I had become incredibly sensitive to just about everything at that point and the binder cholestyramine (CSM) they had me on caused a blockage. Took me 4 months to figure that out and to address it, probably the worst 4 months since everything started in 2007. Almost a year’s worth of mold remediation and remodeling eventually followed.

During all of this, my collective frustration built up over the years bubbled to the surface and Ravel was born. It was part selfish, wanting the last decade plus to count for something, and of course part wanting to make sure other patients didn’t have to deal with the misdiagnoses (or no diagnoses), medical gaslighting, untrained providers and exorbitant out-of-pocket costs.

I was fortunate to meet my co-founder, Jaime, around this time. Like many patients in our community, we had similar stories and similar frustrations and we decided to join forces, and the rest as they say, is history.

There have been a lot of ups and downs since this all began in 2007 (or really probably back in ’94 with that first concussion), with gradual improvement over time. While not necessarily close to 100%, I feel like I’m trending in the right direction and I’ve started doing some things around brain and nervous system retraining, which have really moved the needle for me, so excited about that.

We’re all obviously different and the same things won’t work for everyone, but we’re committed to providing patients with the best possible experience on their Lyme, mold and complex chronic illness journeys. It’s not always going to be perfect, but we promise to keep learning and to keep improving, in the hopes that all of us can return to full health and lead the lives we were meant to live. 

Successful Team Builder | Chronic Lyme Patient

Chronic Lyme patient with decades of experience in marketing and leadership development and a proven track record for building highly successful teams.

Dr. Darin Ingels is a licensed naturopathic physician, author, international speaker and leading authority on Lyme disease. He is a former Lyme patient who overcame his own 3-year battle with Lyme disease, after having failed conventional treatment and became progressively debilitated. Dr. Ingels found that proper diet, lifestyle management and natural therapies worked with his body to heal instead of against it. He then applied what he learned about his own healing journey to his own Lyme patients and found they recovered faster and with less side effects. Dr. Ingels has now treated more than 8,000 Lyme patients using his novel approach, many who have gone one to live healthy, symptom-free lives. Dr. Ingels has been featured on WebMD, MindBodyGreen, BeWell, ThriveGlobal, Motherly and Dr. Ron Hoffman’s Intelligent Medicine podcast and is the author of The Lyme Solution: A 5-Part Plan to Fight the Inflammatory Autoimmune Response and Beat Lyme Disease.

As Chief Scientific Officer at Global Lyme Alliance (GLA), Dr. Sellati leads strategic planning and coordinates research initiatives to accelerate the development of more effective methods of diagnosis and treatment of Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. A noted immunologist and microbiologist, Dr. Sellati has 30 years of research experience in this area of vector-borne infectious diseases. He has published nearly 50 peer-reviewed infectious disease papers, almost half of which are focused on Lyme disease. Dr. Sellati is frequently invited to speak about his cutting-edge research at national and international scientific meetings and with news media outlets. Today he is considered one of the nation’s foremost experts in the search to understand infectious disease processes and improve treatments for patients suffering from Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses. Prior to joining GLA, Dr. Sellati served as Distinguished Fellow and Chair of the Department of Infectious Diseases in the Drug Discovery Division at Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. Prior to that, he received a BA degree in Biology from Dowling College in 1985 and a Ph.D. degree in Cellular and Developmental Biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1996. Dr. Sellati began postdoctoral training in 1996 at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and completed his training in 1999 at the University of Connecticut Health Science Center in Farmington. After joining the Center for Immunology and Microbial Disease at Albany Medical College as an Assistant Professor in 2000 he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005 and earned tenure in 2010. From 2013 through 2015 Dr. Sellati served as an Associate Member at the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, NY before moving to Southern Research Institute. Dr. Sellati also was the Immunology Scientific Councilor and is currently the Microbiology Councilor for the International Endotoxin and Innate Immunity Society, the past President of the Eastern New York Branch of the American Society for Microbiologists and has served as ad hoc member of a number of National Institutes of Health Study Section review panels and as a reviewer for several scientific journals in the areas of immunology and microbiology. Dr. Sellati also serves as a member of the New York State Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, the Alabama Commission on Tick-Borne Illness, and sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of DiaSorin.

Nathan Morris MD, Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, has a private practice, Good Medicine Colorado, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Dr. Morris is a board certified Family Practice doctor who graduated from Louisiana State University Medical School.Dr. Morris is passionate about making the complexity of disease simple. He specializes in Lyme, mast cell activation syndrome, mold, autoimmune issues and much more in the field of complex disease. Dr. Morris also utilizes genetics in understanding the root cause of health issues and helped co-create the Pure Genomics platform with Kelly Heim, PhD for Pure Encapsulations, where Dr. Morris serves as Chief Medical Advisor. He lectures internationally on genomics and other health issues but his greatest passion remains seeing patients.