05/31/2026
Today marks the final day of Lyme Disease Awareness Month. We’re closing it by sharing the story behind why the Lyme Treatment Foundation exists. 💚
At 21, our founder Wendy Phillips came back from a morning walk in Vermont covered in tiny specks. She picked one off her leg, hoping it was dirt — and it moved.
She knew Lyme disease was serious. She’d grown up in Connecticut and heard warnings about it as a kid. But when she googled it that day, the symptoms listed were joint pain and fatigue. The internet told her it was manageable.
It wasn’t.
What followed were years of progressive decline, misdiagnosis, and dismissal from rheumatologists, neurologists, cardiologists, and infectious disease specialists. Nine emergency room visits. No answers. It took a nurse to finally connect her to the right physician and treatment began that day.
As she recovered, Wendy learned that thousands of patients couldn’t access the same care, not because it didn’t exist, but because they couldn’t afford it. In 2019, she founded the Lyme Treatment Foundation to change that.
Since then, LTF has awarded nearly $900,000 in grants to patients across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, funding testing, treatment, and university research, including an active collaboration with the University of Oxford.
Read Wendy’s full story here: https://lymetreatmentfoundation.org/wendys-story
Lymedisease.org
