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Fight with Bree

My name is Bree Baslington. I have been struggling with Lyme Disease for the past nine years of my life, all the while striving towards a better future for myself and others like me. I was born and raised in Spokane Valley, WA, only moving away to progress my treatments. Until I started to get sick, I was a very active member of the community; participating in all kinds of sports, volunteering, and working with children at the city’s day camp.

Moving away from Spokane was a difficult decision for me considering how little support I would have in the Seattle area, but it was one that I do not regret. I chose to move to Woodinville, WA in May of 2016 after avoiding the move for several months prior. There I became a full-time patient at Sophia Health Institute, seeing multiple doctors at a time, receiving daily IVs, and numerous injections. Without the time I spent there, I would not be here today.

During one of my trips to Spokane during the holiday season, my father and I were in a car accident that destroyed most of my possessions including the majority of my medical supplies and tools, as well as broke my back. I suffered an L1 burst fracture that left me in severe chronic pain. I spent three months in a back brace, requiring a special hospital bed and equipment to remain semi-functional without help. Replacing all of my medical equipment as well as purchasing more drained the remainder of my medical funds and left me struggling to make ends meet.

As time progressed in Woodinville, the treatments began to get more and more of a financial burden. With the cost of living rapidly increasing in the area, and the medical bills piling up, I chose to move back to the Spokane area in order to regroup and start to save in order to go back. The cost of care at Sophia Health Institute is purely dependent on how well I am doing at any given time, but typically it cost anywhere from $7,000- $10,000, or more a month.

My goal is to one day go to medical school and become a doctor that helps others the way so many of my doctors have helped me. Being twenty-five, this seems like a hefty goal, but I am used to defying the odds and pushing myself past the limits that others have placed on me. More than anything, what I want to do is inspire others like me that they can be more than their diagnosis.

For me, being healthy is not as simple as staying focused on treatments for a fixed amount of time, my condition is chronic meaning that I will be always need some form of treatment to manage my condition. That being said, my hope is to start to work more and more as I progress in my journey to a healthier life, but that is easier said than done. As of right now, I am able to work a few hours a week- something I never thought I’d be able to do at this point in my treatment. Soon, I hope to go back to college and begin working on my bachelor’s degree and eventual doctorate.

Now that I have recovered as much as I can from the car accident, I am in a place to continue to push forward towards my goal of managing my Lyme to a place that allows me to work more consistently and go back to college. In order to do this, I need to make another big step in my health journey; receiving treatment in Europe.

When I was sixteen, I had my wisdom teeth removed in an attempt to stop my headache. Long story short, because of my compromised immune system I ended up with an infection in my jaw (cavitation) that prevents my head from draining properly thus pushing the majority of my infection in my brain. German medicine has the technology to circumnavigate the nerves near where my wisdom teeth used to be, so they are the only ones who can fully clean out the infection. On top of this, I also need cryotherapy on my tonsils. My tonsils were removed when I was a sophomore in high school after suffering severe tonsillitis, but over time with my weakened immune system, one has begun to grow back- full of infections. This new tonsil has a very high likelihood of becoming cancerous if I do not take action soon. The nature of these procedures may seem fairly harmless, but because of the severity of my condition and my current heart problems will require me to seek addition support. My hope is to not only have doctor support in Europe, but also a full-time caregiver to help get me from appointment to appointment. On top of scrambling to pay for my basic every day needs, I am trying my best to save enough to travel for these surgeries.