Interview with Allie Cashel - A Journey of Self-Discovery

Unconditional Healing with Jeff Rubin

This episode is about one young woman’s coming of age while battling a chronic illness (Lyme and tick-borne infections in this case) and her journey of self-discovery. Allie Cashel is a Lyme disease warrior, advocate, and author. I also was diagnosed and treated for Lyme in my own healing journey and encountered many of the same obstacles that Allie describes, so I was very interested in having her as a guest on the show.

With chronic Lyme, one needs to be a warrior because there are so many unnecessary obstacles put into one’s path. Did you know that doctors can lose their license to practice medicine if they have the audacity to treat Lyme with alternative methods, including prescribing antibiotics for more than 30 days? My own Lyme specialist had to put non-Lyme diagnosis codes on my scripts so he could prescribe antibiotics for months at a time. That’s because for many illnesses an extended antibiotic regimen is not questioned, yet for Lyme, it is.

Allie speaks of her shame, being unable to share her symptoms and illness with even her close friends lest they think less of her. This is often the case with so-called "invisible" illnesses. In Allie’s case, a major debilitating flare-up in the 12th grade resulted in a highly rated infectious disease doctor accusing Allie of not being sick, but having a mental regression to an earlier age to get her mother’s attention. This same highly acclaimed doctor accused Allie’s mom of being a horrible parent for trying to cure Allie of a "phantom illness".

Allie eventually used these obstacles to write a ground-breaking book and start a non-profit dedicated to Lyme advocacy and resources. Her journey is right in the Unconditional Healing wheelhouse, of using adversity and illness as a source of self-discovery and honing of character.