Season 7, Episode 186

Join us as we dive deep into the world of Lyme disease, exploring its symptoms, controversies in treatment, and the crucial preventive measures to stay safe while enjoying the great outdoors. My guest, Dorothy Leland and I, shared personal stories to highlight the challenging journey of diagnosis and the resilience needed to manage this disease.

This episode sheds light on the complexities of Lyme disease. Our discussion aims to arm our listeners, particularly active agers, with the knowledge to protect themselves and enjoy their passions without fear.

Episode Highlights

**Understanding Lyme Disease**: Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness that can cause a spectrum of symptoms, from flu-like symptoms to more severe health complications if untreated. It's essential for everyone, especially those who enjoy outdoor activities, to be aware of how to protect themselves.

**Personal Stories**: Wendy shares the harrowing journey of her husband's initial misdiagnosis, and how they came to find the correct diagnosis of Lyme disease. Dorothy discusses her daughter's battle with Lyme disease, which left her wheelchair-bound for three years.

**Preventative Measures**: The importance of protective clothing treated with permethrin, proper tick removal techniques using tweezers, and the advisability against old methods like smothering ticks with Vaseline or using heat.

**Symptom Checklist**: Dorothy Leland elaborates on the importance of lymedisease.org's symptom checklist, which can be a critical tool for discussing potential Lyme disease with healthcare providers.

Links

**Stay Protected**: As you plan your next adventure outdoors, remember to dress appropriately, use insect repellent, and conduct thorough tick checks upon returning indoors. Visit lymedisease.org for more resources and a symptom checklist.

Protective clothing can be found at: Insect Shield, look for clothing treated with permethrin.

Insect repellents recommended include Lemon Eucalyptus Oil or Picaridin

**Subscribe and Join the Community**: Don’t miss our next episode on stroke awareness. Subscribe to our newsletter at heyboomer.biz and stay tuned for more enriching discussions that help redefine aging.

**Support our Sponsor**: Plan your next trip with RoadScholar.org/HeyBoomer You will be glad you did!

Hello and welcome to the Hey, Boomer show. My name is Wendy Green and I am your host for Hey, Boomer. And Hey, Boomer is the podcast where we go beyond the surface, sharing real talk about aging. Well, I hope everyone had a really nice mother's day. However you spent it, whoever you remembered, I was lucky. I went on a hike with my son and his family. It was a gorgeous day, absolutely gorgeous. And we hiked to a waterfall.

It was a fairly technical, strenuous hike, but so much fun. Unfortunately, I did not find any ticks on me. We did see a snake slithering away over some rocks, but we really had a wonderful time. When I lived in northern Virginia, my husband had a small cabin in the Shenandoah wilderness, and he used to use it to access hunting and fishing. And we'd go up there and hang out and explore the streams and the trails, and at night we'd build a bonfire and just sit around and enjoy the quiet. There was no running water in the cabin. We had an outhouse, but we really did love that place. So one summer, probably around the year 2000, we had plans to go away for my birthday.

And suddenly he started complaining about this, like, really awful headache. It was really so bad that he couldn't stand it. Nothing seemed to help, and it got so intense, and he got really scared. So we went to the ER and they admitted him for tests. They gave him morphine for the pain. That's how bad it was. So since it, you know, it was a headache kind of thing, they did CAT scans, they drew spinal fluid, they did all kinds of tests, anything they could think of to see what could be the problem with the head or the brain that was causing those problems, and nothing showed up. So after a day or so, and the pain seemed to ease up, they sent him home.

But it came back, and we were back to the hospital for more tests. And this time they put him on the floor with cancer patients. And so he was absolutely sure convinced he had some kind of brain cancer. Still nothing showed up. And so one day I was reading the Washington Post, because that's the newspaper up where I lived, and they mentioned something about tick borne illnesses. So I went to the doctor and I said, you know, we spend a lot of time at this cabin, and he hunts and fishes out there. Could it have been a tick bite? Fortunately, the doctor was suspicious, listened to me, and so he called it an infectious disease doctor. The first test they ran, still nothing showed up.

But they told us that sometimes it doesn't show up right away. So they ran the tests a couple of days apart, and sure enough, it was Lyme disease. They were continuing to treat his headaches with morphine, which definitely worked, but it also just completely knocked him out. Once they realized it was Lyme disease, they put some kind of a port in his arm where we could do intravenous antibiotics. So they sent us home to do the antibiotics at home. We had to do them for about a month, certainly couldn't administer the morphine at home, so he was just managing the pain as best he could. And eventually it did ease and we were lucky that it was diagnosed fairly quickly. This is not often the case in my conversation today with Dorothy Leland, who is president of lymedisease.org, comma

We're going to learn so much more about this nasty disease. Lymedisease.org advocates nationally for Lyme disease patients. Dorothy joined the organization after her then teenage daughter became seriously disabled by Lyme disease in 2005, and she's written two books about Lyme disease and spearheads the lymedisease.org quote s public education efforts. So the book she co wrote with her daughter is called a "A Teen's Journey through Lyme disease", and it's based on a journal that her daughter Rachel, kept during the worst part of her illness. And the book tells not just Rachel's story, but also that of her mother as they navigated the tricky waters of trying to get properly diagnosed and treated for Rachel's symptoms. The second book, also co authored by Dorothy with Sandra Berenbaum, who is a psychotherapist who helps families who've been impacted by Lyme disease, is called "When Your Child has Lyme disease, a Parent Survival Guide." But before I bring Dorothy on, I want to mention our sponsor, Road Scholar. So participating in a Road Scholar trip, it might introduce you to nature history, river cruises, biking tours, art, music, food, new friends.

It's just so amazing. And whether you're a solo traveler or traveling with a partner, you will find a program that fits you and your abilities. Road Scholar programs are all inclusive. They're from expert led lectures and field trips to lodgings, most meals, gratuities, and group transportation. They handle all the details and all the costs incurred during the programs, including some of those you might not anticipate. So check out all that Road Scholar offers today by going to roadscholar.org/heyboomer and tell them you heard about it here on Hey, Boomer. And if you're ready for real, talk about aging well, or if you're confused about all the differing information about health and finances and family dynamics and all that other stuff that comes at us all day, every day. Or you sometimes worry about slowing down and feeling forgetful.

Well, once a week, I share my thoughts with you on any number of these topics. I source articles from some of the smartest people and sites that I know. I share some of the challenges and opportunities that I experience and how I manage them. So if you're ready to easily access insights to help you feel better about this time of your life, go to Heyboomer.biz and click on Connect with us to subscribe to the newsletter. And remember that I love your comments. I love your comments live in the chat. I'd love to see you comment and rate and review on Apple, Spotify, LinkedIn, anywhere that you listen to the show. It really helps other people find us, too.

So please comment, comment, comment. All right, let's talk Lyme disease. Hello, Dorothy.

Hi, Wendy.

Thank you for being with us today. I'm really looking forward to learning a lot from you today. So first of all, tell us where you live. Dorothy.

I live in northern California, near Sacramento, the state Capitol.

Okay. And Lyme disease in California. I guess I always thought of Lyme disease as being an east coast disease.

Well, that's interesting. A lot of people think of it as being an east coast disease, but actually it's been found in all 50 states. Certainly there tends to be more of it on the east coast. But there are, one of the things about California is California is a really big state. And so there are sections of California, certainly around the Mendocino area, that they've studied ticks a lot over the last couple of decades. And some of those areas in California have tick infection rates higher than Connecticut, really. But when you average it over the whole state, it's like, oh, well, not such a big infection rate. So, I mean, there certainly are places all around the San Francisco Bay Area, touristy spots, beautiful parks and that sort of thing.

A lot of infected ticks along the beaches, okay. The scrub that's close to the beach, Point Reyes, I don't know if you're familiar with that area. It's a beautiful national seashore area. The thing is, you can get bitten by a tick anywhere. Ticks are carried by birds and mice and other little critters that move around. So it's something that you just need to be aware of. It was not on my radar screen at all. After most of my life, living in California wasn't on my radar screen at all.

Well, I'm sure. And I mentioned your book with your daughter finding resilience, a teen's journey through Lyme disease. So I want you to tell us that story. How old is your daughter now?

She's 32 now.

Okay. And when did this happen?

Yeah, when she was 13. She was in 7th grade, and she was a soccer player. And one day she fell and hurt her wrist in a soccer game. And kids that play sports get injured sometimes. But it was a weird thing where, although there was nothing seemingly wrong with the wrist, it seemed to just set off body wide pain, just intense pain. She was soon in a wheelchair. She couldn't, from a wrist injury, seemingly. And it was.

It was just. It was very weird. There were other weird symptoms. It was. She would be hot and cold. Like, 1ft would be ice cold to the touch. Another one? Well, the other one was hot to the touch. She would feel like she had a little electrical bolts going through her body, and.

And it was just. It was. It was very weird. And when we went to the doctor, just as you said, in your experience, they tested the kinds of things that they test for and, oh, this is all normal. There's nothing wrong with this child. She's racked in pain.

That's normal.

But it was. It was very hard. It was. It was almost a year before where we found out that it was, in fact, Lyme disease and co infections. Something that I would say, just as a layperson, in responding to what you said about your husband's experience, I really wonder if he was ever evaluated for co infections, which are other pathogens, that the tick can carry more than one bad thing with it when it bites you, and you can get. You can get more. More things, and often that real severe headache. Again, this is anecdotally, but my sense of that is, that is often with co infections, various kinds.

So how did you ever get the doctors to finally test for a tick disease? Because they're probably like the rest of us. California. No, we don't have that.

Yeah, well, we certainly got that. We certainly got that. That reaction from people, basically. This was in 2005, and there was not, although we had the Internet, there were not all the social media groups and those kinds of ways of spreading information. And at that time, even. Well, I'll tell you, it was a neighbor. A neighbor said to us, yeah, any chance you could have Lyme disease? Because they knew somebody that had had a similar situation, and it turned out to be Lyme disease. And so I started looking for that online and found not very much information that was helpful.

And when I asked one specialist that we were seeing at the time, I asked about Lyme disease, and he said, oh, there was absolutely no chance that it could be Lyme disease. And I was like, well, why? What do you base that on? And he said, oh, because there's no Lyme disease around here.

That's right, you're in California.

And I said, we don't spend all our time here. We go camping, we go hiking. And it was just, no, no, there's nothing around here. And at the time, I thought that was very weird, but I thought it was weird. Like that person was weird and we were in a weird situation. In time, I would find that that was, that weirdness was very widespread. And I hear from patients still people with, with Lyme disease or reason to believe they might have Lyme disease that are told, nah, you know, there's no, there's no Lyme around here. There have been people that have called the advice nurse for their health plan and said, gee, I was just bitten by a tick.

And they say, oh, well, you don't have to worry about Lyme disease because there's no Lyme disease around here. But it's very frustrating. And so one of the things that my organization does and other patient advocacy organizations do is try very hard to spread the word, to bring awareness. And may is. Lyme Awareness Month is actually observed throughout the world now. Different.

Oh, is that right?

Because Lyme disease is, is a global, is a global problem. It can be found throughout, throughout the world. Now, if we could talk a little bit about ticks. There's kinds of ticks, and different kinds of ticks can carry different diseases. Some of them can carry what's commonly called a deer tick or western black legged tick, is what would carry Lyme disease in California, but it can also carry these other babesia anaplasmosis. There's all of these other co infections. So often the term is just tick borne diseases. And the thing is, you know, you can have, you know, some people say, oh, well, it's not, you know, this particular tick, you know, so you don't have to worry about this or that.

Well, that particular tick might not carry Lyme disease, but it might carry something else you're not interested in having.

Yeah. So, so let me.

The average person, you just don't want anything to do with any.

Right, right. And so I don't want, I don't want to scare the audience. Right. Because I advocate getting out in the woods and, and getting out in nature and hiking and forest bathing and smelling the flowers and all of that. Right. So let's talk about prevention. How do we get out there safely?

Okay, well, the first thing I say is that you need to be ticket aware. You have to know that it's a potential problem. As I said, I was, I was oblivious. I, you know, I knew nothing. I knew nothing about it. So you need to know that, you know, ticks are itty bitty little bugs that, that can be on plants, can be in leaf litter on the ground, and can be on the lower part of tree trunks. And so carrying firewood, they can be in downed logs and firewood. So first of all, you want an awareness.

You want an awareness that that sort of thing exists and that you should be concerned about it. And then what can you do to protect yourself? Well, when you're going out and you're going to be out in territory where that could happen is that you can wear protective clothing. And part of it is just being covered up, long pants, not walking barefoot through grassy fields, as delightful as that might be in other ways. You wear protective foot gear and you wear, know, long pants and long sleeves, your face and other areas of skin that are exposed, you can put bug repellent on it. And there are different kinds and many people don't want to use Deet. And although the government still recommends Deet, but there are other, there are non Deet products that are effective. There's, one of the ingredients is Picaridin and Lemon Eucalyptus Oil and which. Lemon eucalyptus is a thing.

It's not lemon and eucalyptus combined, it's lemon eucalyptus oil. And there are products that have, that you want to protect yourself that way. The other, you know, the other thing is to bit goes along with awareness, is to do tick checks. And if you are, particularly if you're wearing light colored, colored clothing, it's easier to note if there's a tick on you. But I think it's really important to recognize that the nymphal ticks, the young ones, are really small, they're the size of a poppy seed and they look like a little speck of dirt. It would be easy to miss in terms of one of the best things you can do when you get home from, let's say you've been out in the woods hiking and you come back is take a shower, soap up and run your hands all over your body with the soapy hands because you'd be more likely to notice a little bump. And if there happened to be a tick on you that was not attached, the shower would wash it away. If it's attached, the shower is not going to wash it away, but your soapy hand running over it might find something that, say, on the back of your leg that you wouldn't have otherwise noticed.

It's important to remove it properly. And depending on where it's located on your body, you might need somebody else to help you if it's the middle of your back or something. Kind of hard to use tweezers back there.

Yeah.

Pull firmly. And sometimes there are, you know, for years, there have been old sort of what they call old wives tales about, you know, smother it with gasoline. I watched some television show once where they were saying, oh, they had ticks and they put, they put gasoline on it or separate from the gasoline. They burned the tick with a match.

Yeah, I've heard that one, you know.

And it's just like, no, don't, don't, don't do that.

Don't pull it straight out with a tweezer.

And so, but also, if you smother it with, say, Vaseline, we're told that from researchers that the, that the ticks can regurgitate whatever, you know, bad stuff they have in them. And so that's not advised either. So tweezers, pull it out.

You also mentioned protective clothing. So you.

Yes, yes. Now, something that I personally do and members of my family do, you can buy clothing that has already been treated with a substance called permethrin, which is derived from chrysanthemums. And it's on, you can buy clothing that has already been treated or you can buy like a can of it to spray, and you can spray it on your clothes and your boots, your hiking boots, yourself. And it doesn't last. If you, if you, my understanding from the manufacturers, if you, if you spray it on yourself, on, say, a pair of pants, it should last through five washings. If you buy the kind that has been already, you know, put on by the manufacturer, it's supposed to last 70 washings.

Wow.

What my husband and I do is we have a set of clothing that, that's what we wear when we go hiking. We wear those pants. We wear, you know, that shirt and, and socks and we, and we periodically.

And a hat. You wear a hat, too?

I wear a hat, yes, that I have one that has been treated.

Treated.

You can get, you know, bandanas. You can get, you can get pretty much. And with the stuff that you spray on yourself, you can spray your backpacks. You can spray, tests have shown that it's, you know, that it's, that is very effective.

So, so let me stop you there a moment? Susan is concerned that she just raked her compost and leaf pile last night and didn't think about tick. So should, you know, hopefully, she never got bit and doesn't notice it. But what would be some of the symptoms that might show up if you did get a tick bite and you didn't realize it?

Well, first I would say that it's not too late for her to take a shower and soap up and check all over, because ticks, sometimes when they attach, they can stay attached for a couple of days. And also check your bedding. Sometimes people will find ticks that had presumably been on their body and fallen into their bedding. That's awful. Check your bedding. So that's, that's, that's something to do in terms of, of symptoms, something that some people get, but not everybody, and my daughter certainly didn't get. This is what they call a bullseye rash. But it's important to note that even a bullseye rash, what they consider a bullseye rash, doesn't always look like a bullseye.

So it can be just kind of a red blotch sometimes. You can go to our website, lymedisease.org, and see pictures of different EM rashes that are related to Lyme disease. That's one symptom. Another symptom is just generally feeling like you've got the flu during the pandemic. A lot of people that felt like they had the flu could have also had Lyme disease, and some of them did. We heard from people that had been tested for COVID, you know, three different times negative. And then finally somebody said, let's test them for Lyme disease, and they tested positive. Flu like symptoms can be the flu, can be Lyme disease, can be COVID, you know, and probably other things as well.

So it's not a slam dunk. That that's, that that's what it is. I would certainly watch for anybody for any symptom that came up that seems.

Yeah, my husband didn't get that rash either, and so therefore, I don't know how long it was between the time he got bit and the time he started showing symptoms. Do you have any idea of how long that might take?

It can be a short time, and it can be a long time. If your body's immune system is in good shape, it could hold it off, and it can even be years later. There was a woman, I used to run a Lyme support group in Sacramento, and there was a woman that came to our group, and she was saying that she had gotten bitten by a tick and had a bullseye rash, but didn't know. She had a friend that was a nurse who said, oh, that's a bullseye rash. But she never went to the doctor. She never did anything. She felt fine. And several years later, her husband died and she got really, really sick.

And people were saying, well, you know, you're grieving and everything. And she said, well, I was grieving, but I was also really, really sick. And it turned out that she had Lyme disease. And it was like, and I have heard that from mother. I've heard heard speakers, doctors talk about that. I heard one doctor who said a lot of his patients, he was a Lyme doctor, said a lot of his patients had recently experienced a trauma of some sort. You know, they were in a car accident or death of a loved one. And obviously, the car accident or the death didn't cause the Lyme disease, but it brought it the body's reaction.

Right, right. I mean, yeah, because we know that stress will impact our immune system and make us more or less resistant to any kind of infection that may be dormant in our bodies. So that would make complete sense. So if we do start experiencing symptoms, course, we know from both of our stories that takes doctors a while to even think about testing for that. But once they do, what are some of the treatments and, and long term effects?

Well, I'd like to say one thing before I get into that. Is that on. On our website, lymedisease.org, comma, we do have a symptom checklist. They ask you a question and you answer it. And depending on how you answer, it gives you, you know, these different answers that explain things. And then when you're done, you can have a PDF of the whole thing and take it into your doctor. And so it's supposed to spark a discussion with your doctor about these symptoms that you've been having in exposure to ticks, and that that's helpful.

Yeah. So that's lymedisease.org. Lyme is spelled l y m e. Lymedisease.org . Okay.

Right. So. So that is. That is a good way to start. Generally, if. If you are diagnosed with Lyme disease, generally the mainstream medicine will start out by giving you antibiotics. It's often doxycycline. Sometimes it's other antibiotics, depending.

Obviously depends on a person's own, you know, health as to what, you know, some people are allergic or whatever. There are herbal treatments. Some people find that there's herbal treatments that are sort of supportive of the immune system and that kind of thing. And you can be doing that in conjunction with antibiotics. Unfortunately, it's still controversial in terms of how it should be treated. And I was really helped a lot by, I told you, this was before there was all the social media that's available today, but that there were some online support groups, and that's how I found information. And it's not that you. It's not that you believe anything.

You're everything you're told, but it can point things out to you and. And ways. Ways to find. To find information that you need and. And ways to talk to your doctor.

Frank, my husband was fortunate that we were diagnosed early, but I understand that some people have, like, long term effects of Lyme disease that can last for years. Is that right?

Well, that is certainly the experience. That is certainly the experience of a lot of Lyme patients. That is something else that is controversial in the medical world. Unfortunately, the, shall we say, the powers that be have for years said that Lyme disease can't persist beyond a short course of antibiotics. You take a short course of antibiotics and you're done. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people that. That is not their experience. And one thing that has been really brought this to the forefront is COVID.

And how. Some people have COVID, they feel terrible, but then they get better and they're fine, and other people have COVID and they don't get better, and they don't feel fine. And they call it long COVID. And so what is becoming to be recognized, even by some of the mainstream folks, is that it isn't just COVID. It's long COVID. It's long Lyme. It's long me, CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, long fibromyalgia. There's a whole lot of what is coming to be called infection associated chronic illness.

And it is. And so there are, you know, there's medical research that is starting to really look at that as this spectrum, this sort of whole package of things that can happen to people. And I think that that's the right direction to go, to go through. You know, I think a lot of people have problem. You know, people listening to this show have maybe had, you know, one symptom or another symptom for years. And, you know, not necessarily Lyme disease, but something in this. This category of things that are just kind of amorphous. And it can give you, you know, can give you symptoms like headaches.

It can give you symptoms like joint pain, it can give you symptoms like gastrointestinal problems, and it can. One of the. When I started my support group many years ago, one of the first Lyme patients that I met was somebody that her. Her very first symptom was that she woke up one day and could not speak. It turns out she had vocal cord paralysis.

Oh, my.

Now, that is not. I would not say that is a common symptom of Lyme disease. But when she finally got, you know, figured out what that was, and she got treated for it, she got her voice back. And so one of the things. Things about. About Lyme and related things is that it can cause crazy stuff. Sometimes people will say to me, oh, Dorothy, you think everything is Lyme disease.

Well, yeah, you probably do, because that's what you.

That's what you think about that sometimes, you know, that. That sometimes there are these underlying conditions that end up manifesting themselves in very weird ways.

Yeah. Okay, so I think we have sufficiently scared everybody, so let's. Oh, wait. I have two people asking, how's your daughter? Does she still have long term effects, or is she all better now?

My daughter is doing very well.

Oh, good.

And she. She was in a wheelchair for three years from age 13 to 16, but she took snowboarding lessons this last winter. She is. I would say she has to be. She has to be careful with her health. She has to make. She goes to bed early, make sure she has good, you know, rest and that she eats well, but that's something we all should be doing. Right? And I think that many times when people are better from Lyme disease, they take these.

Well, there's different reactions. Some people are like, well, I want to go over and just do absolutely anything I could, and, you know, sort of don't. Don't worry about the consequences. But I think a lot of times, people find themselves, you know, paying attention to their nutrition and making sure they get adequate sleep and exercise and those kinds of things. But actually, she's doing very well.

Okay, we're glad to hear that. So we still want to get out and play in the woods, and.

Yes, we do.

Yes, we do.

We want to wear our three takeaways clothing, and we want to, you know, not, you know, not get down and roll around in leaves. I'm sorry. I know some people like to do that. I would like to say one more thing about dogs. Well, cats. Cats can get it, too, but, I mean, dogs, you're more likely to take on a hike with you through the woods. You have to be concerned about ticks and tick borne illness for dogs. For the dog's sake, but also for your own sake, because particularly a long haired dog, but also a short haired dog, they can, you know, ticks can hitch a ride on your animal.

And particularly there's a lot of people who sleep with their dogs. If there's a tick that's on your dog and it's not attached, it's kind of walking around. And particularly if you're sleeping in the same bed, it might take a walk and come on over to you. So you want to, you know, dogs need to be checked given tick flea and tick collar. You know, preventions. Actually, before, long before we had my daughter's health problems, it was probably five years before that, we took our dog someplace where we're hiking, and we came back and it had two, two ticks in his belly. And I didn't know anything about it. It was just like, huh? And I have a friend that really knows a lot about dogs.

And she came over and said, oh, yeah, we got to get those out. She did all this. So clearly, we, and we didn't do anything about testing the ticks or anything. It was just, you know, just, just was what it was. And, but that was something that we didn't talk about. When, if you, if you find a tick on yourself and you remove it, it's possible to get it, to get it tested for pathogens. There are, there are a number of places you, you have to pay, but there's, we have a, we have a list of those places on our website as well.

Okay. So leave us with two or three takeaways so that we can go thrive in the nature and enjoy the beauty that's around us.

You are going to take a, you're going to have a positive attitude that you're going to go out and you're going to enjoy nature while at the same time taking care of yourself. You're going to wear your protective clothing and you're going to put some insect repellent on the area that just like you'd put, you know, sunscreen or anything else. And you're going to check yourself. You're going to check yourself when you get back, you're going to take a shower and you're going to soap up and just, just rub your hands all over looking for little bumps that didn't used to be there.

Okay, that's great. So the intention today was to provide all of you listening with insight and knowledge that will reduce your anxiety about getting out into nature. And I think Dorothy gave us so many ideas about what could potentially happen, but also to know how to be safe and prevent and to have you know how to check yourself. So I think that that was all very important information and we can still get out and enjoy the beauty. And all of these links are available on her website, lymedisease.org, and they will also be in the show notes. So thank you for that, Dorothy. That was very informative. You have so much knowledge about this, so I appreciate you taking the time to be with us.

Happy to do it. Thank you.

I also want to remind people that when you are planning a vacation, think about Road Scholar, go to roadscholar.org/heyboomer and look at all the trips they have to offer both in person and online. If you feel like you can't really travel right now,

and when you are thinking about, hmm, what, what should I do about aging? Well, and what are some of the questions that you have about that? Go ahead and subscribe to the newsletter by going to heyboomer.biz and click on Connect with us. All right, so I also wanted to remind you, next week, no, two weeks. Two weeks is Memorial Day, and I've got some exciting news I'm going to share with you on Memorial Day. So you may have already noticed some of the changes in the podcast, like the new opening music and the monthly themes where we're digging deeper. So I'm going to do a short episode on Memorial Day to tell you where all of this is going. So stay tuned for that. And next week, we're talking about stroke awareness because May, besides being Lyme disease Awareness month, is also stroke Awareness Month.

And this is a super important topic as well. So if you saw in my newsletter this past week where I was like, I am desperately looking for somebody to talk about stroke awareness, well, thank you. The University of Pennsylvania medical School, they have found somebody for me. His name is doctor Chris Favela, and Chris is a stroke neurologist and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he's also the director of the non invasive Cerebral Hemodynamic Evaluation center. So we're going to talk about stroke symptoms, stroke treatment, stroke prevention. Probably a million questions and thoughts and warning signs and all of that that will come up. So you definitely want to tune in for that. So each episode of hey Boomer is an invitation to listen, learn, and apply the wisdom that you gained from that episode to your own life.

The path ahead may not always be easy, but it's traveled best with the support and shared insights that you get here on hay boomer. Thank you, Dorothy, so much. And enjoy the rest of your day, the rest of this year.