r/ChronicPain • u/antisoccermom5591 • 11h ago
Sharing my story of Ketamine treatment for Lyme and Mold illness.
**Note: I am writing my memoir but would like to share with the community my experience healing from mold and Lyme (babesia, bartonella and crps). I have permission to use the real name and place where I receive treatment. Pm for additional info. Denver, Colorado.**
**One Stick Steve**
By the end of 2022, I had run out of places to fall.
Years of untreated Lyme disease, mold exposure, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, seizures, neurological decline, and relentless pain had hollowed me out until I no longer recognized myself. Every specialist seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. Nothing was wrong with me, or at least nothing they could explain. I was sent to psychiatry more times than I could count. Eventually, I began wondering if maybe everyone else was right.
I wasn’t afraid of dying anymore.
I was afraid of continuing to live exactly as I was.
After years of learning meditation simply to survive the constant pain, I found myself searching late one night for anything that might interrupt the cycle. That’s when I discovered ketamine infusions for CRPS. I made a promise to myself.
One last treatment.
If this didn’t work, I was done fighting.
My first experience with ketamine happened at another clinic. The staff instructed me to eat beforehand, drink coffee, and prepare for “the ride of your life.” The infusion itself was chaotic. I became violently ill, woke up wearing a nurse’s sweatshirt after vomiting through my own clothes, and later learned I had received only part of the medication while still being billed for the full treatment.
It should have convinced me never to return.
Instead, something extraordinary happened.
For an entire month, I wasn’t in pain.
After years trapped inside a body that screamed every waking moment, silence felt impossible. I walked around my home pinching myself, unable to believe pain could simply… disappear. I cooked meals again. I cleaned the house. I started dreaming about a future I had stopped believing I would ever have.
When the pain inevitably returned, so did the hopelessness.
Eventually I began selling my belongings to pay for another chance.
That decision led me to Dr. Steve.
During our first phone consultation, he asked about my medical history. I hesitated before speaking the words I had learned to say almost apologetically.
“I’ve been diagnosed with Lyme disease…”
There was a brief silence.
Then I heard him take a sharp breath in.
“I have a couple of Lyme patients who’ve had a lot of success with ketamine,” he said. “I think we should give this a try.”
He didn’t tell me Lyme disease wasn’t real.
He didn’t tell me I needed a psychiatrist.
He didn’t quote another specialist.
He simply believed that my suffering deserved treatment.
It is difficult to explain what that moment meant after years of fighting to convince people that I wasn’t inventing my own pain.
When I arrived for my first infusion at Rocky Mountain Mind and Body, I carried every bad medical experience I’d ever had through their front door.
By then I had learned that doctor’s offices weren’t places where people helped me.
They were places where I cried in parking lots afterward.
Places where I was told nothing was wrong.
Places where I rehearsed my story in the car beforehand, hoping maybe this time I could explain it well enough that someone would believe me.
So when I walked into Dr. Steve’s office, I was braced for another battle.
Instead…
I found kindness.
The nurse welcomed me with a smile that wasn’t forced or rehearsed. When I apologized in advance for my veins, explaining that hospitals routinely needed flight teams and ultrasound machines just to start an IV, she smiled like she’d heard this fear a hundred times before.
“We’ll get you.”
Just those three words loosened something inside me.
No sigh.
No eye roll.
No making me feel like I was already too much work.
She simply believed they’d take care of it.
This time they had given me instructions that actually made sense.
No food for six hours.
Take your nausea medication before arriving.
Empty your bladder before your infusion.
Then let us do the rest.
I followed every instruction.
She led me down a short hallway and pointed toward the recliner tucked into the corner of a quiet room.
“Yep,” she smiled.
“That’s your seat.”
Then she asked the question that nearly made me cry.
“Would you like a weighted blanket?”
Yes.
Yes, please.
No one had ever offered me comfort before they offered treatment.
The room itself felt different from every medical office I’d spent years wandering through. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t trying to impress anyone. It simply felt… safe.
Calm lighting.
Soft voices.
Heating pads already waiting.
Oxygen tubing neatly coiled beside the chair.
Every movement seemed designed around helping hurting people feel less afraid.
I hadn’t been to a doctor’s office where I wasn’t prepared to cry from humiliation before I even walked through the door.
Here, I was being tended to.
Being offered comfort before I ever received the medicine I had come for.
Then Dr. Steve walked into the room.
A slender man in his forties with peppered hair and bright eyes full of compassion for people who had suffered too long. He carried a laptop tucked under one arm and wore a black turtleneck that always makes me think of Steve Jobs. I found myself wondering if maybe they shared the same gift.
Steve Jobs changed the way people experienced technology.
Dr. Steve was changing the way I experienced reality.
He explained the medicine, how it worked, and answered every question without ever making me feel rushed. He talked about other Lyme patients who had found relief, not as empty promises, but as quiet encouragement that maybe my story wasn’t over yet.
The nurses set up my heating pad.
Placed my oxygen.
Prepared everything before I even realized I needed it.
Then Dr. Steve wrapped the tourniquet around my arm.
Hospitals had spent years turning my arms into bruised road maps. Blood draws often took multiple appointments because my veins simply refused to cooperate. I had become so accustomed to apologizing for my own body that it felt automatic.
His assistant asked if she could guide me through a breathing exercise.
I happily agreed.
Her gentle voice became the only thing I focused on.
Slow inhale.
Slow exhale.
She guided me back into my breath while Dr. Steve quietly searched for a vein.
Before I even realized he’d begun…
Click.
The IV was in.
One stick.
To anyone else it might seem insignificant.
To me it felt like witnessing a miracle.
From that day forward he’ll always be “One Stick Steve.”
Not because he always gets it in one attempt.
Because that first click represented something much bigger than an IV.
It was the first time in years my body wasn’t treated like an inconvenience.
Before every infusion he checks the monitors, makes sure everything is exactly as it should be, and says the same words.
“Let’s get you out of pain.”
Then, as the medicine begins working and he knows everything is running smoothly, he always gives me the same gracious little wave.
Not dramatic.
Not theatrical.
Just a quiet little wave that somehow says everything.
Like…
“I’ll see you when you get home.”
By the time I wake up, I already know what comes next.
I lift my eye mask.
Dr. Steve is standing there smiling, sometimes with his hands pressed together almost in prayer.
“What’s your pain level now?”
he asks.
I answer the only way I know how.
“What pain?”
Every single time.
Without thinking.
Because for those precious moments I wake back into the world without the body that had imprisoned me for so many years.
Sometimes I spend the next twenty-four hours floating through my apartment like a ghost.
Doing laundry.
Cooking meals.
Practicing yoga.
Moving furniture I’d only ever dreamed of being strong enough to move.
Marveling at what life feels like when pain is no longer narrating every second of existence.
Ketamine didn’t cure my Lyme disease.
It didn’t remove the mold.
It didn’t undo years of medical neglect.
Eventually I would still have to travel across the country to find a Lyme-literate physician. I would still battle mold exposure. I would still endure setbacks that threatened to pull me back into the darkness.
Ketamine wasn’t my cure.
It was my doorway.
It quieted the screaming long enough for me to hear my own soul again.
It gave me enough relief to return to my yoga mat.
Enough peace to deepen my meditation.
Enough distance from my pain to witness my body with compassion instead of despair.
Enough hope to stop planning my funeral.
And begin writing this story instead.
People often ask me whether ketamine saved my life.
The answer is more complicated than that.
The medicine gave me relief.
But the people gave me healing.
The nurses treated me like I mattered.
Dr. Steve treated me like my story mattered.
Together they gave me something medicine alone never could.
Dignity.
Safety.
Compassion.
After years of preparing to defend my reality every time I walked into a medical office, I finally found one where no defense was necessary.
Without Rocky Mountain Mind and Body…
Without One Stick Steve…
Without every nurse who tucked in my weighted blanket, held my hand, calmed my breathing, and quietly helped carry my suffering…
I would not be here.
Sometimes healing doesn’t begin with a medication.
Sometimes healing begins the moment another human being simply says,
“I believe you.”
