Jeanne Grant’s Journey: Conquering Lyme Disease and Finding Hope

In this episode of the Inspiring Journeys podcast, guest Jeanne Grant shares her powerful story of resilience and advocacy after she was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2011. She shares her story from childhood, her introduction to horses, her shift to a career in accounting, and her life as an advocate for Lyme disease awareness. This enriching conversation explores Jeanne's diagnosis, the struggles she faced, and her journey towards recovery with the help of innovative treatment. Jeanne also offers advice for others who might be suffering from Lyme disease and emphasizes the importance of proper diagnosis and family support.


Key Topics:

Diagnosis Challenges: Difficulty in recognizing Lyme disease due to its diverse symptoms, often leading to misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis.

Physical and Emotional Impact: The toll Lyme disease takes on the body, including fatigue, pain, and cognitive issues, as well as the emotional strain of dealing with an unpredictable illness.

Treatment Journey: The process of finding effective treatments, which may involve a mix of conventional medicine, alternative therapies, and lifestyle changes.

Living with Uncertainty: Coping with the uncertainty of recovery and the constant adjustment to new symptoms and setbacks.


Key Takeaways:

Early Diagnosis is Crucial: Recognizing the symptoms early can help prevent delays in treatment and reduce the long-term impact of Lyme disease.

Holistic Approach to Healing: A combination of conventional treatments, alternative therapies, and lifestyle adjustments can provide the best path to recovery.

Physical and Emotional Resilience: Managing the physical challenges of Lyme disease requires not only medical treatment but also emotional strength to cope with its effects.

Self-Advocacy is Empowering: Taking an active role in your health care, seeking out the right specialists, and staying informed can lead to more effective treatment outcomes.


Jeanne's Bio: Jeanne Grant is the founder of the Lyme Revive Foundation, a nonprofit organization born from her personal experience with Lyme disease and her mission to offer hope and healing to others affected by the illness. After enduring severe symptoms that left her bedridden for three years, Jeanne, along with three of her five children, faced the devastating impacts of Lyme disease. Despite years of treatment, including antibiotics and a Rife Machine, Jeanne found a life-changing solution through a cationic mineral formula. This formula, which led to her miraculous recovery, inspired her to create the Lyme Revive Foundation, which educates the public, funds treatments for those in need, and supports Lyme disease research and a

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Chapters

• 0:00 Jeannie Grant's Lyme Disease Journey
• 15:26 Recovery From Lyme Disease Journey
• 25:35 Resource Sharing in Podcast Episode

Transcript

Lauri Wakefield
00:00
Hi, welcome to the Inspiring Journeys podcast. Thanks for joining me today. I'm your host, Lauri Wakefield, and my guest today is Jeanne Grant. Would you like to say hi, jeannie? Hi, hi everyone. So Jeannie's professional background includes working as a CPA, a CFO, a controller and an auditor. She's also a dedicated advocate for Lyme disease awareness and recovery. She is also a dedicated advocate for Lyme disease awareness and recovery, inspired by her own powerful journey as a survivor. So let's start talking Jeannie about. Let's go back to your childhood. So when you were what? About seven years old? Maybe you were introduced to horses, or was it before that? 

Jeanne Grant
00:40
About 10 years old, we visited a family, a really close family friend, and they had horses. And then that was. That was the beginning of my passion
. 
Lauri Wakefield
00:49
And you still have horses today. I've had them ever since except in college, okay. So did you compete at all, or you just had the most pets? 

Jeanne Grant
01:00
I competed in high school, but my passion is training. 

Lauri Wakefield
01:04
Okay. 

Jeanne Grant
01:04
Everyday training like I am showing, but I don't compete I compete with myself. 

Lauri Wakefield
01:10
So then, from your childhood, then, when you got into college, you decided to get a degree in accounting right. 

Jeanne Grant
01:18
Yes, I started out as a biology major just because my school counselors told me to do that. And then I got in college and I'm like what am I going to do? I'm not, I didn't know enough, and so it was a little journey to fall into it, but I figured. I needed to make money to pay for our studies.
 
Lauri Wakefield
01:37
Yeah, so it was accounting something that you, that you enjoyed yeah, I was really good it just naturally my brain thought that way, so it became. 

Jeanne Grant
01:49
It was pretty easy for me. 

Lauri Wakefield
01:51
Yeah, I'm just asking those questions because I know when I was in college I had a lot of people. It's like your first and second year you go in wanting to major in something, then you change your major and sometimes people get. They go in and they know exactly what they wanted to do. I know for myself. My dad told me to be a business administration major. I was like, okay, so that's what I did. But anyway, let's get back to your story. Okay, so after you graduated from college and where did you grow up?
 
Jeanne Grant
02:19
My father was an officer in the army so we moved around every three years. I lived in germany for three and a half years middle school and before that I lived in florida, kentucky, new york. He taught at west point when I was really little, so mostly east coast. 

Lauri Wakefield
02:38
Okay, on the east coast so after you graduated from college, then you started working as a CPA. 

Jeanne Grant
02:45
Yes, and we lived in. His last post was in Maryland and so I got my CPA in Maryland and then worked for a CPA firm for a couple of years and then I really didn't like tax season. It was just taxing and I was really interested in real estate so I went into the private industry.
 
Lauri Wakefield
03:07
Okay, and then, at some point in your career so you were diagnosed with Lyme disease. What year was that? 

Jeanne Grant
03:14
11. Okay, were you married at the time I was married. Yes, I got married in 1994. And I so I've had. I got married when I was 31. So I had a 10-year career and I knew that when I had kids I wanted to be home and I stayed home. So I guess I left in 95 when my son was born.
 
Lauri Wakefield
03:40
And then in 2011, you were diagnosed with Lyme disease.
 
Jeanne Grant
03:45
Go ahead and talk about that. We moved to the country in 2006. We built a home on the Potomac River 20-acre farm and it was our dream. It took two years to build and it was beautiful and you could hunt, fish, ATV, ride horses, you could do everything and we were right on the river. And that was when I started just very slowly not feeling well twice a week and it just slowly diminished to where if I did that I didn't have energy for the day over time, so it took us a while. 
04:29
So that was five. I was diagnosed five years after living there, but we had tick bites Okay.
 
Lauri Wakefield
04:37
So you think that's what it was.
 
Jeanne Grant
04:40
I think I had it a long time. I think that contributed to bringing it on, and I also had a little bit of trauma. Trauma usually brings on. It makes your immune system go down and then things that you can normally fight off you can't Like. I got shingles, but I had a tragedy with my neighbor's husband dying, had a tragedy with my neighbor's husband dying, and so that is what. And three of my kids got sick pretty much at the same time too, and it became devastating. 

Lauri Wakefield
05:13
So you had three years where you were pretty much bedridden right. 

Jeanne Grant
05:17
Yes, yeah, and my kids couldn't go to school. It was just a really hard time in our family and my husband had five kids, so he had to handle everything. 

Lauri Wakefield
05:31
Yeah, when we talked before, you were saying that it took a while to get the diagnosis, you didn't know what it was. But when you went to your regular doctor, your primary care doctor, they did some blood work and everything came back as they were like you have five kids, you should be, tired. 

Jeanne Grant
05:49
I've had headaches. I had neckache backache when it hit my knees, I knew it. I had some skin conditions but my husband was researching for a few years because it came on really gradually where I didn't really understand it. But it didn't really hit me until I was like my naps just got way too long.
 
Lauri Wakefield
06:12
So how did you actually end up being diagnosed with it? 

Jeanne Grant
06:15
So I went to a chiropractor. Actually, my husband, in a business meeting and some CEO told him that he actually would pay for chiropractic appointments for his employees and because he had headaches and they took him away. So I went to a chiropractor because I had migraines every day and they were really bad. And when I mentioned and I did go a couple of times a week because it would help my back, my neck and my back but when I mentioned and I'd bring my daughter with me, who had the same neck issue and she was probably 14. And when I mentioned to him that my son, who was eight, had back problems, he was like, oh okay, you guys have Lyme. And then that took me down the road to figuring out how to get tested and get a doctor. 

Lauri Wakefield
07:07
When you were with your primary care doctor, did they do a blood test for Lyme disease? 

Jeanne Grant
07:13
Yeah, we did them. And the Western blot. We did a Western blot and it was negative, which I think it's very well known Like the doctors are supposed to tell you that they're not accurate. They're like 30, either 30 or 60 percent accurate. So it's pretty major and what you have to do is go get tests that aren't covered by insurance and they're expensive and they're inaccurate too. So it's really a nightmare because you don't know what way, where to turn. 

Lauri Wakefield
07:43
Right. So what did you do? How did you actually get the diagnosis then? Was it through? 

Jeanne Grant
07:47
saliva. 

Lauri Wakefield
07:48
Was it through blood. 

Jeanne Grant
07:50
It was blood works through hygienics and one of my good friends, her uncle had Lyme and her whole family was just discovering that they had Lyme and so she guided me where to go and then also recommended her uncle's doctor who was able to help him and it took a waiting list to get into. These doctors are really long and it was like a two hour drive away and the appointments, like my first appointment was $800. It gets very expensive first appointment was $800.
 
Lauri Wakefield
08:28
It gets very expensive. So for somebody today, if they're wondering whether or not they have Lyme disease, where would you direct them to go to be tested? I mean they could contact me. 

Jeanne Grant
08:35
There are, like I just recently found out about, new tests, frequency testing and they're actually. You send in saliva, nail and hair and they can even tell you what species you have and like how bad the infection is. It's not widely accepted yet in the medical field, but, oh, I'm trying to think they could contact me and I could give them information. But to go to a Lyme doctor, don't go to your primary care. You need to go to a Lyme doctor. 

Lauri Wakefield
09:07
Right. Are you talking about, like a rheumatologist, or are you talking about somebody who actually Like a holistic doctor, a natural doctor, not a primary care. 

Jeanne Grant
09:17
I think the regular doctors aren't educated in school about it at all, but it is a lot more common nowadays that people are aware. 

Lauri Wakefield
09:29
So now, the iGenX that you're talking about, is that like a platform where doctors can be listed and you would go to them? They're like Lyme disease experts listed on the website.
 
Jeanne Grant
09:40
No, actually you can self-test. You call them up and pay a little fee and they'll send you a test and you take it to a. You can go get your blood drawn with that kit and then they send you the results personally. 

Lauri Wakefield
09:58
So it's like a like an order, like a lab order, and you could take it to West or to LabCorp. 

Jeanne Grant
10:04
Yeah, that's what I did. I went to LabCorp. 

Lauri Wakefield
10:09
Do you know what the cost is for the kit? 

Jeanne Grant
10:12
I think the line test might be $500. There's a whole bunch of co-infections. Like when I went to my doctor she was like, oh, we need to run all these tests, and it was another 2,000. But I think really, just if you have Lyme. 

Lauri Wakefield
10:27
You don't need to do all that. How prevalent do you think it is Lyme disease? 

Jeanne Grant
10:32
I think most of the autoimmune issues that people have today are related. 

Lauri Wakefield
10:40
Is that your opinion, or is it something that you've read or something that you've learned from somebody to say that?
 
Jeanne Grant
10:45
Oh, it's my opinion. I've been working with helping Lyme patients for 10 years now, okay, and so I've walked a lot of people through the healing and so it's really actually probably a lot of the doctors would agree with that, like it's known in the community.
 
Lauri Wakefield
11:02
So would they test positive, like for what am I thinking of? The? ANA test. Would they test positive for that with Lyme too? You think I don't know what it stands for, but it's something that measures autoimmune disease. It doesn't measure the disease itself, but it's an indicator that you may have an autoimmune disease.
 
Jeanne Grant
11:23
So probably what I would say is if you are a person that, no, you're not, you have symptoms that come and go in many different ways, because it affects people differently depending on their body and their weaknesses, and you just go to doctors and they're like everything's fine, we can't, we don't see anything wrong, and that's frustrating. 

Lauri Wakefield
11:46
Yeah, when you're like you know it's,

Jeanne Grant
11:50
Yeah. Yes. If you have anxiety, if you get headaches, if you can't sleep and you have some aches and pains, see if you can get tested for it. 

Lauri Wakefield
11:59
Yeah, okay. So the ANA. I just looked it up because I knew it had something to do with it. I'll have to, yeah. 

Jeanne Grant
12:04
I'll have to look that up. 

Lauri Wakefield
12:06
It's an anti-nuclear antibody test. That's what it's called. It's a blood test that detects autoantibodies that attack the body's own cells. It is often used to help diagnose autoimmune disorders like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis. 

Jeanne Grant
12:20
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. So my mother had rheumatoid arthritis and is now better from it she had it 35 years and was pretty crippled. But you're talking about the a and a. It's what I was going to say is the reason it's they call it and I think this is my opinion the reason they call it autoimmune. They think the body's attacking itself. Our bodies don't attack itself, it's the spiral. Cheats are so teeny tiny that they can't be detected, and so it's really trying to kill them. 

Lauri Wakefield
13:00
What's a spirochete? 

Jeanne Grant
13:01
That's Borrelia, is the Lyme. It looks like a little snake. Borrelia, for Lyme, is a spirochete. 

Lauri Wakefield
13:09
So when you find out that you had it, then what was the protocol? What did they put you on? 

Jeanne Grant
13:15
I did the antibiotic protocols and that's really what the doctors recommended and that's what helped my friend's uncle. So I thought, oh my gosh, that's it. And like I had a PICC line for eight months that I had to go get surgically put in, right, but it actually just made us sicker. 

Lauri Wakefield
13:38
Okay, so who did you go to? Actually, you got the results back from the kit that you sent back, or the what, when. 

Jeanne Grant
13:45
So yeah, I went and I researched Lyme doctors and so I, when I got in with this doctor, I was so happy, but I didn't get better and it wasn't until so that whole three years I was bedridden. 

Lauri Wakefield
14:00
So was that the doctor? How did you find that doctor? 

Jeanne Grant
14:03
My girlfriend.
 
Lauri Wakefield
14:04
That's the doctor that you drove for two hours to get to. 

Jeanne Grant
14:07
Yeah, and I didn't get better. And I ended up going to another really famous doctor in the Washington DC area for about a year and a half with my kids and what? How we got better was my. So through my husband's work. He worked for a big law firm and headed up their business development and in that job he would just meet many companies and help them get funding, venture capital and all this stuff. He met these guys with a small company that had a cure for cancer and when they met we were like at our low and he was like, hey, guys, he can cure cancer. Do you know anything about Lyme? And the one lead guy was like, yeah, I think we can kill it. And so he sent us and it's mineral, cationic, mineral-based, they're very special and hard to make, it's not your regular minerals and he sent them to us and we got better.
 
Lauri Wakefield
15:10
So one thing I wanted to say that you mentioned about that they have a cure for cancer. Now, that's not something. That's a big statement to make. So what do they base their claims on? 

Jeanne Grant
15:18
That's something that's a big statement to make. So what do they base their claims on recovery. 

Lauri Wakefield
15:25
But we don't really need to focus there, yeah. 

Jeanne Grant
15:26
And actually these guys. What they did was they started researching Lyme and I worked with them. They were so intrigued with the Lyme and the getting better and I worked with them for five years. We brought in doctors and helped. We had a lot to learn, but it was like a research project. For five years I worked with them and saw a lot of people get better. 

Lauri Wakefield
15:49
So what is their background? That's, the two that own the company. 

Jeanne Grant
15:53
Basically scientists. Okay, they didn't, they weren't doctors, just really smart guys. 

Lauri Wakefield
16:00
Okay Okay. So they came up with a product that you started. It was what drove you initially was for you to help yourself and your family, right yeah, and it did end up helping you.
 
Jeanne Grant
16:13
It did, and because Lyme disease is torturous if you can't get better and you look okay, some are like you're a hypochondriac you you look fine and but we. If I went into my kids and what happened to them they were. It was devastating if I didn't get better and so I see. So I just wanted to help families get out of that nightmare so with the product that was developed. 

Lauri Wakefield
16:44
Like you working with different people, just as a as an advocate for the recovery, do you see people actually recovering from the Lyme disease? Like a lot of people, a lot of people or,
 
Jeanne Grant
16:58
Absolutely. And what's tough is it takes time to recover. So it's not like an antibiotic where take this for 10 days and you're going to be okay. The Lyme disease is very serious. It does damage and so, depending on the person, your recovery could take a long time, like for me. I would say I'm 75% better at the end of 60 days, but it took a couple of years for everything to totally be gone but functioning. After a month I was up training my baby horses that had grown up. But the thing is your symptoms cycle away. So you don't really know you're you don't on the bad day, you're like it's not gone but it. But it dies after 60 days and your body has to catch up. 

Lauri Wakefield
17:49
So is it something that you continue to take or you just took? It took until you started feeling better? 

Jeanne Grant
17:53
I only had. My opinion has changed on protocols over the years but we only had 60 days and then we didn't have any more. We now sold the patent in our Lyme Foundation. The inventor wanted it in a foundation before he died because he didn't want Big Pharma to get it and it's like amazing and it's actually. I think really sick people need to go longer. It's in your saliva, so if you look under a microscope you can see them and it doesn't mean you have symptoms. You're just like a carrier and we knew it worked because we would look at saliva before and after. 

Lauri Wakefield
18:35
Yeah, I'm not that familiar. I'm learning things by listening to you. But is it a bacterial infection? Do you think it's? 

Jeanne Grant
18:42
bacterial, but it's very unique. It literally looks like a little serpent. 

Lauri Wakefield
18:48
Wow. So have you actually seen them?
 
Jeanne Grant
18:51
under a microscope. 

Lauri Wakefield
18:53
Really? Wow.

Jeanne Grant
18:54
It's in your saliva.

Lauri Wakefield
18:56
After you started taking the product that was developed by the company, did you go back to your doctor and let them know that you had been, that your symptoms were gone, or did you just move on? 

Jeanne Grant
19:12
Yes, and really they're not that interested because they know they're in their own lane, they're on their own journey. But it can be difficult because they have to be very careful what they recommend to people and it's, you can't. At the time, I didn't even know what minerals they were, and so that couldn't be disclosed and that's really hard to convince people and it was also very expensive and it was like $4,000 a person to do, but all day it's not like through. 

19:48
Getting it from me it's less than 10%. It's 300 and something for the 60 day and that was a promise we made to the inventor that it's going to get out to people. 

Lauri Wakefield
19:58
So that's basically what you do now is you're an advocate and someone who works with people get in touch with you. It's not so much like through a website, it's like by referral. 

Jeanne Grant
20:08
Yes, it's word of mouth. It's word of mouth and, like on the website, we we don't make claims, you're not allowed to make any but it's minerals, so it's grass. It's generally regarded as safe. It really doesn't fall under the f and basically we just say it can help. But it does take time and that's the hard part. So I end up spending a lot of time coaching, so I coach people through it. No, you're going to get better. I know today's a bad day. 

Lauri Wakefield
20:37
So when you talk about coaching, do you actually work as a coach Like were you paid, or are you volunteering to do it? 

Jeanne Grant
20:43
Volunteer.

Lauri Wakefield
20:44
Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, because I didn't see anything on the website about that. So that would be like if somebody's really desperate and they're just, I think I might have it and I just feel terrible and they could get in touch with you and you could walk them through what their options are and encourage them. 

Jeanne Grant
21:00
And I work through the ones that are really difficult cases Like I have a woman I'm talking to right now and she probably texts me 20 texts a day because she feels like she's going crazy and losing her mind, and so I just I have to be patient and just yeah, but has she been tested for it?
 
Lauri Wakefield
21:17
Do you know that she has it? Yes, okay, and is she taking anything for it? She started the mineral, okay.
 
Jeanne Grant
21:24
Okay. So yeah, the mental stuff takes a while. 

Lauri Wakefield
21:29
Do you think it mimics a mental illness or dementia or something like that? 

Jeanne Grant
21:34
Absolutely. So many like schizophrenia, I think dementia, Alzheimer's, ALS, a lot of those, Not that it's all that, but yeah. 

Lauri Wakefield
21:43
You battled with depression yourself, right and anxiety. 

Jeanne Grant
21:46
But there's a difference between I've had anxiety but I didn't feel like I was going crazy. I had brain fog, that sort of thing, but where you it's like a scrambled brain to where you just don't even want to live. It's weird and it's really weird. 

Lauri Wakefield
22:07
And sometimes it's probably hard to separate it from other things that could be going on too, because you're, you were probably like maybe menopausal and at that time. 

Jeanne Grant
22:16
But there's a difference. Those are milder. This is extreme. Do you know what I mean? 

Lauri Wakefield
22:22
No, I do, but I'm just saying like for yourself, like before you knew it's. Sometimes you think I have these things going. Is it this? Is it that? 

Jeanne Grant
22:29
What is it? Yeah, that's what my husband was doing. And he was looking all that up. 

Lauri Wakefield
22:34
Like hormonal, is it hormonal, is it yeah? 

Jeanne Grant
22:36
Yeah, so I'm 62 and I was treated when I was 52. So five years, six years, before that, right at that time, it's all those years and that actually, like what I see in kids, their Lyme can get triggered during puberty. It gets worse. And it's probably the same for like me going through those hormonal changes, because really when you can feel your worst is during a cycle, a menstrual cycle or a full moon, and you walk in your zipper. 

Lauri Wakefield
23:13
Okay, so I'm going to link to the resources that we mentioned. Do you think putting the hygienics website? 

Jeanne Grant
23:21
and there would be helpful to them. Yeah, that would be okay and I'm in one of the most well-known. Yeah, you also said that it would be helpful to them. Yeah, that would be helpful. One of the most well-known. 

Lauri Wakefield
23:29
You also said that you would be willing to share your email for people who have questions or just need some direction with what they can do. 

Jeanne Grant
23:37
Yes, I'm happy to help and guide because it can be very confusing the information that's available, but I could guide you down the road to get tested and know and get help sooner rather than 23 years. 

Lauri Wakefield
23:53
I wonder if some of the damage that it does your body is. I don't know if I would say irreparable, but it can be repaired. But do you think any of it could be if it continues to go on? 

Jeanne Grant
24:03
Yeah, so I don't really have any damage. And here's an example my mother when she did the minerals and it was line, it wasn't going to turn out wrong and she's been in remission ever since and she's 87. Now she had replaced knees and she has damage. Her knuckles didn't come back there. Her hands are a little. They're not too bad, but they're a little deformed. That didn't change. But she just got back from a 21 day cruise in your home with my sister in her house. She got her life. She was a and she couldn't even go to the grocery store and walk aisles. Her legs would swell for days, right, and that was totally different than what I had like I didn't have arthritis and it hits people different, so you're good and there's kids recover fully. 

24:59
The there's great hope. There's really greater hope than you think. Our, our bodies are amazing to self-heal? 

Lauri Wakefield
25:07
Oh, definitely, I believe that, definitely.
 
Jeanne Grant
25:10
That's why I don't think they attack it. It's not programmed. It's attacking something that's hurting you.
 
Lauri Wakefield
25:18
I'm going to link to the resources that we talked about, and then I'll also give your email address for people who either have questions or maybe may think that they have Lyme disease and just want to get some ideas about where they can go to get tested. Okay, so that's going to wrap things up for this episode. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you'd like to see the resources, they'll be included in the show notes and then her email address for people who are interested in trying to get a hold of her with questions, and that's something that's generous for you to send it out there. So I would just say that for people who truly are looking for someone to help Otherwise you wouldn't be putting your email address out there- what I do to help and also the website for the minerals.
 
26:09
Yep, I'll link to that too. 

Jeanne Grant
26:11
Okay. 

Lauri Wakefield
26:12
Yeah, if you'd like to see the show notes for today's podcast, you can find them on my website at inspiredlivingforwomencom. The show notes will be listed under podcast show notes, episode eight. And if you'd like to join me as I continue my conversations with other guests exploring topics for women over 50, please be sure to subscribe to the Inspiring Journeys podcast. Thanks again and have a great day. 

Jeanne Grant
26:34
Thank you.