lyme disease mexico | A Family Afloat

If you missed part 1 click here.

Christian finally started to feel on the up and up after completing 10 days at the Centro Naturista DAR in El Grullo. When the kids and I showed up at the center to have lunch there and pick him up, it was nice to see some life and color restored back into him. In fact, I was so impressed with the center I signed up to do a few days as well. I did this mainly to detox and cleanse and get on the same track as Christian, so that I can help support his healing process. So we switched places. I took his room at the center and he took the kids and a bus ride back to the boat in Barra de Navidad.

The center was amazing! They feed you fresh fruit and veggies everyday. They make you fresh juices and herbal healing teas at specific times during the day. Throughout the day you receive specific detox, lymph draining therapies. All of this is based on an assessment of your irises and current symptoms. Pretty neat stuff. The diet they prescribe is suppose to be followed strictly for 45 days. I’m so glad I got to participate. I learned a lot of different recipes to make for Christian and got a jump start for myself to stick with the diet alongside with him. The diet.

Cooking class, which was all in Spanish, but I understood enough to make sense of it all.

They grow their own wheat grass, stinging nettle and aloe for treatments. 5 am stinging nettle brushing, 5:30 am steam baths alternating with a cold shower, barefoot walks on cold grass, coffee enema and lymph draining exercises, mud compress, and tea all before a 9 am fruit only breakfast. This was by no means a “retreat”, but it was in the sense of treating your body to what it deserves. Jicama con limón for breakfast.

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The town of El Grullo was amazing as well. Quaint and clean. They have sugar cane farms all around the valley. Unfortunately they burn the scraps of the cane, so there is cane ash floating around. The fortunate side of it, is that everyone sweeps the sidewalks and streets. There is literally no trash around in the streets. A rare treat for Mexico. Many people ride bikes around or take the “Hubercito” (meaning mini über) . There are also a lot of herbal and natural food stores. There is a chapel at the top of the hill, which you take a “street” staircase up to. Between treatments at the center, a stroll around town and up to the chapel was a good way to promote blood circulation and lymph drainage. Looking down at El Grullo from the Chapel.

There was a fresh water hot spring called Balneario nearby in the town of El Limón that a few of us “inmates” took a cab to go swim in. The hot wasn’t too active at the time, but the fresh water swim with not a soul around was nice. To top it off, it was only a $1.25 for admission.

A few days in to my stay there I received an email with the lab results for the Lyme disease test that Christian had drawn in Puerto Vallarta 3 weeks prior. To our surprise it came back POSITIVE! It actually came back positive for 2 different tick borne diseases. One is the typical Lyme disease and the other is a type Rickettsia know to come from the Lone Star tick. Both of the levels were really high, indicating an active infection. He has most likely had it for a while. Lyme is famous for hiding out in dormancy for a long time, then surfacing when your immune system weakens due to various causes. The good thing is that a lot of the treatment for Lyme is diet related, so we were already on the right track. The other good thing is that Christian is super strong, so he didn’t get as sick as some people do with Lyme. We promptly made a consult with the Lyme disease specialist in Puerto Vallarta just to make sure we were on the right treatment path, but we were pretty confident that we had the right tools to a full recovery.

“Meanwhile, back at the ranch”, Christian was at the boat with the kids, in Barra, back to surfing, and making new friends with cruisers we hadn’t met yet. He was sticking to his diet of fruits, veggies and nuts, no caffeine, sugar, diary or alcohol. Our sailing life and health was in an optimistic trajectory. I returned revived and ready to support him and our family’s health. Apparently Lyme can be sexually transmitted, so I’m doing my best to keep it away or possibly rid it as well.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who helped support us during this time both emotionally and through the “go fund me” post. Although medical treatment in Mexico is extremely affordable, it adds up. We wouldn’t have been able to do it and keep sailing if it wasn’t for your help. Muchos Gracias por toda sus ayuda!

That’s it for part 2 of the “La Cruz to Barra de Navidad and back, the trilogy. The Holistic Path to Recovery”

If you missed part 1, click here.

Stay tuned for part 3. “The adventure returns!”

After our 2 months in La Cruz (Dec 17-Feb 20) working with Christian’s various illnesses, we did one last lab test for him and left to head toward Barra de Navidad. Christian was finally feeling well enough to depart the Puerto Vallarta area and venture down the coast of Mexico to places that we sailed to last year. We felt safe leaving the populated area knowing that if Christian began to feel really sick again, it was an easy bus ride back to Puerto Vallarta or Manzanillo. The sail was familiar and included only one overnight. We felt confident that Christian’s energy would hold strong for the sail. We needed to get our sailing fix!

Although Christian was diagnosed and treated for Salmonella Typhoid, Rickettsia, and antibiotic resistant E-Coli, he was still feeling ill. We weren’t sure whether it was just because his body had been through so much in the last 4 months or if we were missing something. In our “guts” we felt like we were missing something. The day we left to start sailing toward Barra de Navidad, February 20th, Christian went to have his blood drawn to test for Lyme Disease at the Lyme Disease specialist in Puerto Vallarta. A week prior, we went to see the Lyme Disease specialist ($30 for an hour consult!) as something to rule out. We were skeptical that he had it, but we were on the “leave no stone unturned” path. The lab results would not return for a few weeks, we would be getting them sent by email, so sailing south while we waited made sense. Yes, Mexican doctors will send you results via email, they’ll even text you on their personal cell phones! The test for Lyme and other tick borne parasites was $250. This apparently is a universal fee throughout labs in the US and Mexico because the test is quite extensive and 95% accurate. We were lucky to be able to have it drawn in Puerto Vallarta and sent to Mexico City for testing.

Meanwhile, we remained hopeful that health was ensuing after so much time. We set sail as soon as Christian retuned from his lab draw appointment. The overnight sail from La Cruz to Bahia Chamela usually takes around 20 hours with good wind the whole way, so leaving in the afternoon was perfect to get us there first thing in the morning. The sail was great! For a few hours that night with downwind speeds reached ~30-35 knots, we had a double reefed main and furled jib to 70%. The bioluminescence was brilliant. Dolphins swimming and playing around the boat, hearing their breaths and seeing floresence glow as they move through the water. We arrived in the anchorage off of Punta Pérula in Bahia Chamela at 0400. It only took us 16 hours!

Bahia Chamela was such a nice breath of fresh air after being confined to Banderas Bay (Puerto Vallarta area) for over 2 months. We handled the overnight well, but it had been a while since we had done it together. We were not in a groove and both of us didn’t sleep much. The next day (our first day in Chamela Bay) was exhausting and homeschooling was a challenge. Note to self, do not attempt to homeschool after a sleepless passage! After a nap, we pulled up anchor and went to the furthest anchorage south in Bahia Chamela to try to catch some surf. S/V Cat2fold and S/V Full Monty joined us as well. We caught some waves and potlucked on Shawnigan. The next day we went to a bat cave before heading to another anchorage nearby. There was a bit of wind and the water was pretty stirred up. The snorkeling we were hoping for was not happening.

S/V Full Monty

Brian from SV Cat2fold.

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After 2 nights in Bahia Chamela, we set sail for Bahia Tenacatita. A nice day trip, downwind. No complaints from the Shawnigan crew. We stayed at “La Vena” anchorage, although most cruisers call it Tenacatita. We spent many days here last year. We did the mangrove dinghy adventure again with a S/V Full Monty, Mango, and Sea Glass. No crocodile sightings this time around, but it was fun none the less. We enjoyed the company of SV Empyrean again as well as SV Mango Mango. We even managed to organize a dinghy raft up potluck.SV Full Monty and SV Mango weaving through the mangroves.

A few days of playing and sailing , the action started to take its toll on Christian. He was being really careful with his diet, not eating sugar, dairy, and not drinking alcohol, but his fatigue and reoccurring symptoms were surfacing again. The sail down from Tenacatita to Barra de Navidad was thankfully painless and did not require a lot of energy. Along the way, we remembered about a friend of ours who recently went to a holistic center in the mountains near Barra de Navidad. He had been pretty sick with a lot of vague symptoms and came back healed! With going through all of the western medical treatment for Christian and having him still struggling, we decided to have him go the natural route while I stayed with the kids in Barra. As soon as we anchored, he called the center and planned to be there within 2 days for a 10 day treatment. (The experience at Centro Naturista DAR could be its own post, so I’ll save the details for part 2.)

Shawnigan was safely anchored in the Barra Lagoon while Christian was away. I had many fellow boat neighbors to help us if we needed it. There were a few other kids boats as well for most of that time to help keep the kids company.

I feel like I’m repeating myself a little from our last year’s experience in Barra. We did a lot of the same things, but with different sailors. We did our schooling, which was usually done by lunchtime. After that, we’d go swim with our boat friends that were in the Marina at the Grand Bay resort. The kids always have a good time there, because the pool area is huge and the slides at the pool are fun. Sometimes we’d go to town for “El Reconcito” for Papas Rellena ( stuffed potato) or get Rosa’s 10 peso Tamales for dinner. Rosa selling her Tamales. She remembered Taj from last year.

We met up with some of the local friends that we made last year and went to the beach with them and had sunset potlucks. We did some hiking and kayaking and bird watching too. Sunset dinner potluck at our friend’s beach house.

Don’s service with a smile, pouring rounds of tequila shots is what he does best 🙂

Ellamae doing school

Spoonbills and Ibis

Taj and Zoey playing onboard Empyrean.

Taj looking up the birds in the bird guide.

SV Carumba boys with Ellamae and Nina.

Hike up to “shipwreck lookout” looking down on the ship that crashed during 2015’s Hurricane Patricia.

Sunrise reading.

Hike with SV Empyrean to the secret beach.

2.5 weeks and no test results yet for the Lyme disease. We waited it out in Barra longer. Meanwhile treatment for Christian at the Centro Naturista seemed to be working well. It was time for him to come back to the boat. On Christian’s 10th day at the Centro Naturista, the kids and I took a bus ride up to the mountains to the town of El Grullo to see the center, have lunch with him and pick him up. It was a super windy road as we all got car sick. No one threw up, but we were sure close. The bus takes you to Autlán, which is where the singer, Carlos Santana, is from. From there we took a taxi to El Grullo. Dinghy to the Hotel Sands with the Grand Bay resort in the background.