Get acquainted with the hosts of the Lyme+ Podcast: Kenzie Vath & Dan Wagner. From their origin stories with Lyme, to breaking down stigmas around Lyme, Kenzie and Dan are on a mission.
If you have Lyme disease or want to learn more about it, you need to check out the Lyme + podcast. Hosted by GLA board member Kenzie Vath and GLA Ambassador Dan Wagner, the podcast airs every other Wednesday at 12PM ET/9AM PT and is available on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I had the chance to catch up with Kenzie and Dan and learn about their own Lyme stories, their passion for helping others, and their hopes in launching the podcast. Allow me to introduce you to them!
Meet Kenzie Vath
Like many of us, Kenzie suffered for years with misdiagnosed symptoms before getting accurately diagnosed with Lyme disease and several co-infections. She says her mother described her as a “sensitive kid” growing up, one who always struggled with health issues. Her tick-borne symptoms began around age 9 or 10, when she thought was entering puberty. She later learned that her susceptibility to illness including mono, as well as her body aches, fatigue, learning disabilities, and concentration issues had nothing to do with puberty. By middle school her grades were slipping and she became moody, anxious, self-conscious, and uncomfortable. “It just wasn’t my personality,” she says. But her symptoms, including gastrointestinal issues, were written off as puberty or anxiety. .jpeg?width=300&height=450&name=KenzieVath-MMPhoto-168%20(1).jpeg)
In high school, Kenzie was a competitive dancer who took better care of herself than most kids that age, eating well (without knowing it, she was already on the “Lyme disease diet”). Yet after dance competitions, she’d end up in bed for a week. With heightened body aches and fatigue, she was only able to do the bare minimum at school. Becoming more and more introverted, Kenzie says she “got to a pretty dark place,” contemplating suicide. At least 15 doctors saw her for stomach and anxiety issues but had no answers besides hormone replacements that she didn’t need. Kenzie’s parents prayed.
An answer came when Kenzie happened to attend a health-related event with her mom and heard about Lyme disease. Kenzie turned to her mother and said, “Mom, this is what I have. This is what I’ve been battling for the last 10 years.” Kenzie and her mother both started crying. “I still get shivers when I talk about this story,” Kenzie says.
This is part of the story that many of us know all too well—we have the aha moment, we see a Lyme Literate Medical Doctor (LLMD) and get accurately diagnosed with tick-borne disease, and think we’ll finally get treatment and get well. But late-stage Lyme can be incredibly difficult to treat, especially when complicated by co-infections, and the road to health is often long and winding.
For Kenzie, working toward wellness eventually meant starting and then stopping college, moving to another state for intense treatment that nearly killed her, re-starting school online, getting a PICC line twice, using a Rife machine, taking supplements, and reframing her entire life course. After 10 years of treatment, Kenzie has thankfully been focused on basic maintenance since 2019, and is now raising a beautiful family while also writing books (check them out!) and pouring her energy into her work with GLA.
“Today I’m very high functioning,” Kenzie says, “I think because of my persistent nature and tenacity.” She’s careful to pace herself, eat well, and not over-exert. And while she still has residual issues including chronic pain and days when she’s a lot more tired than the average 35-year-old, she’s “focused on serving other people and giving them the hope that they can get through it.”
Kenzie first found GLA online and got involved by attending the gala and donating to support GLA’s research. She was asked to become an honoree and joined the board, helping to bring in the highest-grossing GLA gala ever. She successfully started a next-gen committee, spearheading the succession planning for the organization and pitching the podcast to help GLA’s education efforts. “I want the podcast to be a force for education, to change the narrative around chronic Lyme disease,” Kenzie says. “I want to have the conversations, to share the stories, and then have people funnel into GLA for additional resources and potentially become donors.”
Meet Dan Wagner
Dan shares Kenzie’s passion for helping other Lyme patients, stemming from his own arduous tick-borne disease story. His began with cardiac issues of ectopic (extra) heartbeats. A college athlete who maintained an active lifestyle as an adult, he passed out one day in 2019 while helping family members push a car. He’d go on to learn that cardiac arrythmias, dizziness, and fainting can all be symptoms of Lyme carditis as well as POTS. Though he’d been bitten by ticks many times in his outdoorsy life, including a possible bite during a trip to a tick-endemic area of Michigan in 2019, doctors never considered tick-borne illness as an explanation for his symptoms. Two weeks after that bite, Dan was bedridden. .jpg?width=333&height=301&name=Blog%20Images%202024%20(4).jpg)
Dan was hit with a perfect storm during this period, suffering not only physical illness but also life stressors of a divorce, a move, a new job, and, of course, a pending pandemic. His symptoms of terrible chest pains, central sleep apnea, air hunger, an impaired autonomic nervous system, brain fog, and tremors were always dismissed because, as too many chronic illness patients hear, his “labs looked good!”
Dan didn’t let his symptoms or stressors stop him. “I was very sick, and I was still climbing mountains,” he says. While he recognizes he may have over-exerted himself and exacerbated symptoms, his philosophy was, “I’m going to die doing what I enjoy rather than sitting around.” He certainly didn’t sit around when it came to working or to researching his own medical issues. He rose up through a successful career in sales of first aid cabinets, eventually becoming the executive director of sales for a pharmaceutical company. Using his own medical acumen, he downloaded medical journals and researched information. Over the subsequent few years, he was diagnosed with POTS, fibromyalgia, and possible MS. Through his own research, he decided to make some dietary changes that significantly reduced inflammation in his body.
Dan’s foray into Lyme disease was as equally serendipitous as Kenzie’s. His occurred through a chance encounter with someone at church who was talking about Lyme, a disease Dan had been researching as a possible explanation for his own symptoms. Dan got connected with the man’s wife, a medical practitioner who tested him for Lyme and co-infections. He indeed had tick-borne illnesses, including babesiosis, and also had Epstein-Barr virus (a diagnosis that sounds very familiar to my own!). Around the same time, Dan saw the Lyme disease documentary “I’m Not Crazy, I’m Sick” at a screening in Cincinnati, where he got connected with an LLMD and learned about herbal treatments being studied at Johns Hopkins University.
Dan’s own treatment included dietary changes, herbs and supplements, medication, and lifestyle changes. Having always been a camper, Dan realized he felt much better when he was outdoors, away from indoor environmental toxins, especially since his blood work had shown exposure to pesticides. He bought a van and put 71,000 miles on it in two years, traveling around the country, camping and climbing, and working remotely while he battled tick-borne illness. Like Kenzie, Dan credits his tenacious spirit for seeing him through. “Doing 100 different things consistently and being an advocate for myself made me better,” he says. He eventually started asking himself questions that are good for all patients to consider: “What’s good for me? How can I promote better healing for myself?” Now, Dan says he is up to “good months and bad days, versus good days and bad days.” 
Dan became a GLA ambassador in 2023. His business experiences have allowed him to connect GLA with various companies. He joined the next-gen committee and, like Kenzie, is excited about connecting with other people and sharing their stories through the podcast. “I love people. I love talking to people. People make the word go ‘round for me,” he says.
The Podcast
The Lyme + podcast is so aptly named because Lyme is often accompanied by a "+" of one or more co-infections, but also as conjunction for the many other concerns that seem to arise in tandem with a Lyme infection. Kenzie and Dan are interviewing researchers, medical practitioners, advocates, Lyme warriors (myself included!), and more to demonstrate the full tapestry of Lyme disease. “Making space for people to tell their story or share their recommendations and advice is so therapeutic and fulfilling for me as a person of the community,” says Dan.
Lyme + has recorded 12 interviews so far, with upcoming episodes with Aly Hilfiger and Christopher Meloni. The podcast has received 5-star reviews. Kenzie and Dan encourage listeners to provide feedback. “If there’s something or someone people want to hear, we want to know. We want to serve our listeners in the best way we can and want to make sure we’re providing the most quality content.” Give Lyme + a listen and let Kenzie and Dan know what you think, or provide a rating!
For more information or to listen to an episode, visit https://www.globallymealliance.org/lymeplus
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