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Dr. Deb Muth 00:03
What if symptoms that have been dismissed for years aren’t all in your head, but signs of an underlying tick-borne illness or complex chronic condition that needs a different kind of care? Today, we’re talking with Ginger Southley DNP, one of the leading voices in Lyme disease, mortgage, and tick-borne illness care. She brings decades of clinical experience and a deeply patient-centered approach to some of the most misunderstood conditions in medicine. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge approaches to healing, and empower you with the tools to take charge of your life.
I’m Dr. Deb, and today we’re diving into the complex world of Lyme disease, co-infections, more jellins, and the deeper factors that can keep people stuck in chronic illness. If you or someone you love has been struggling with unexplained symptoms, fatigue, brain fog, pain, or a long road to answers, this episode is for you. So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you settle in, and let’s get started on today’s journey toward deeper healing.
You guys can put one of the ads in here, that’d be great. No. There we go. Because otherwise, yes, we’re going to get chatting, and we’ll forget. I pre-recorded the intro part, so we can just dive in, and I can ask you, like, how you got into this, and then we can start our conversation again.
Dr. Ginger Savely 02:01
Okay, I can’t remember what I said last time, but that’s alright, I’ll just…
Dr. Deb Muth 02:04
So, we need to protect them. Well, welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness now. I have a dear lady, Dr. Ginger. She’s being so gracious because we already goofed up our first recording we did on Riverside a few months ago, and she’s been gracious enough to come back and join us again and do it all over again while we’re actually recording. So, Dr. Savely, welcome to the show.
Dr. Ginger Savely 02:26
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Dr. Deb Muth 02:30
Dr. Ginger, tell us a little bit about how you got involved with tick-borne disease and Morgellons, because you are truly a legend in this world, and I’d love for everybody to hear your story.
Dr. Ginger Savely 02:42
Well, I just to very briefly go over, I got into the tick-borne diseases because my daughter was so very sick with it, and I started learning everything I could, and the next thing I knew, I was picking it up in my… population, I was doing primary care, family practice, and I was picking it up in that group. And then word got around, and next thing I knew, I’m treating a lot of tick-borne disease, became 50% of my practice, then 70% of my practice. And then, a few years into it, I started having, well, first of all, Dr. Harvey, who was a Lyme doctor in Houston, Texas, he and I were constantly communicating about things and comparing notes, and he emailed me and said, have you seen any patients with you know, blue fibers coming out of them? And I said, I don’t think so, but I’ll start looking for it. So, then I did, and I started asking all my Lyme patients about it, just, have you had any unusual things come out of your skin?
And once I asked them, then, lo and behold, a certain subset of them said, well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do have that, but I’ve just learned not to mention it, because people think I’m crazy, so I just never, you know, say a word about it. And so I started picking up a lot of these patients, and you know, of course, since I first came at this by way of tick-borne diseases, Lyme, etc. I figured, okay, these people I know have tick-borne disease, so let’s treat that and see if maybe their immune system recovers to the point where they can handle whatever this is causing the Morgellen’s disease. And so that’s the way I approached it at first, just treating underlying infections, since I had no idea what was causing more dilins. I just noted an association with Lyme disease. And so, I put out a paper about 20 years ago. I published a paper that had to do with Basically, one thing… the main point of the paper was correlating
Lyme disease with Morgellins, saying that 97% of my Morgellins patients ended up having Lyme or another tick-borne infection. And, so this is… this is the first publication that basically kind of made that correlation, you know, between the line. And I think it’s been taken out of context a lot, misinterpreted. I never for a minute said that Lyme causes more gelins, not at all, and we… that’s a leap way too far for us at this point. I just noticed an association. So, whatever that may mean, who knows? But, you know, certain illnesses, like, for example, AIDS patients are famous for getting this
Carpacea sarcoma. And it doesn’t mean AIDS causes that sarcoma, because other people get it too. It’s just highly associated with the tooth, so… We might be talking about a disease that’s highly associated with tick-borne infections, or maybe it’s caused by a co-infection that we don’t even know about. Or maybe it’s something entirely different, and the tick-borne diseases were just suppressing the immune system to the point where The person succumbed to whatever this was whenever they got into contact with it.
And so, I began, you know, just experimenting and trying different cocktails of things to see what would work. And as I began to treat, I realized that The more jealous patients did not
get better with a Lyme protocol. They got better when I used a Bartonella protocol, a specific group of antibiotics that’s used to treat the Bartonella infection. Now, again, I’m not saying for a minute Bartonella causes more gelin, but I’m just saying that when I use the treatment for Bartonella, that’s when I get the best results on my mortgageellin’s patients. And I also have noticed that my Morgellen’s patients tend to have other symptoms that are typical Bartonella symptoms, like a lot of the neuropsychiatric symptoms, neuropsychiatric, sorry, and the, the streaks that they’ll get on them, the red tracks. Spontaneous scratches, all that. So those we do see on our Bartonella patients that don’t have more gelin.
So, I started… it was… my early patients were, I would always say, you’re the lab rats, because we’re just experimenting with everything, and they were more than willing. I mean, these people were so desperate, they were so miserable, and so… upset by the way they’ve been treated by the medical establishment, that they were, every one of them, at a point of saying. I don’t care what you give me. it… if it… even if it kills me, I’d rather be dead than have to deal with this, you know?
Dr. Deb Muth 08:07
Try something, right?
Dr. Ginger Savely 08:08
That’s pretty drastic, I know, but that’s where they were. They were at a point where, I don’t care, I’ll take any risk just to do this. However, I’ve always been using FDA-approved medications, and, you know, it’s just… naturally, I’m treating, sort of in my own, kind of invented way, because there’s no textbooks you can go to for this, there’s no algorithms, there’s no treatment protocols for this, because more than half of the medical world doesn’t even believe it exists. So, we… you know, I looked very carefully at all these patients in my office with magnified, lighted magnification, and I was seeing amazing things. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes the hair on the back of my neck would stand out when I would see these things, because You know, bright blue fibers are not supposed to be coming out of the human body. And I would even pull at them with the tweezers, and, you know, they would not come out, so it wasn’t like a matter of they were just stuck on there, you know, from fabrics or something, as dermatologists often claim is the case.
Dr. Deb Muth 09:24
I had a patient once with Morgellons, and she got a magnification glass that she could attach to her phone, and she, like, took pictures of what was coming out of her skin and video recorded it and sent it to me, and oh my gosh, it’s crazy. crazy how these things come out. And if you don’t see it under a microscope like that, it’s really hard to understand what’s going on.
Dr. Ginger Savely 09:48
Exactly. And, you know, what we’ve always said is dermatologists usually carry about a 12X scope in their pocket, but you need really more like 60X to see this stuff, because very rarely can you see it with the naked eye. I mean, sometimes you can, but you do need that lighted magnification in order to see it. I do have some patients come to me, they have all the symptoms more jealous, but they say, I don’t think I have fibers, and I said, well. but you… have you really looked with magnification? They said, well, no, I just thought I’d see them, and I… so then it turns out they actually do have them, but… Yeah. So I… I’ve been fascinated mostly then in treating these patients by how… diverse each patient is, because I can develop a protocol that’s working fantastically on this patient, and try it on the next patient. It doesn’t work at all.
Dr. Deb Muth 10:49
So…
Dr. Ginger Savely 10:50
So, it’s just back to the drawing board, every single patient. And of course, there’s a huge variance in degree of severity of this illness. I have everyone… everywhere from people who are totally functional, going to work, and just have this annoying thing going on, all the way to people who are just completely marred and disfigured and can’t even get out of bed. So, you know, of course, there’s quite a difference there, and naturally, it’s a lot more difficult to treat the more severe cases. And often with the more severe cases. Our best hope is reducing symptoms significantly to where they’re tolerable. But in the very severe cases, I don’t think I’ve ever had a person yet get 100% well. But I do have plenty of others that have gotten 100% well, but maybe they wouldn’t fall into the most serious category, you know. So, but I, I’ve, tried everything. I have tried… antifungal protocols, antiviral, anti-helminthic, and, you know, just… I’ve tried it all, I swear, I don’t think there’s anything I haven’t tried. And, you know, sometimes you hit on what works for that patient, and it might not… it might be a surprise.
I had one patient, I’d been trying the antibiotics with her, we weren’t getting anywhere, and then I just started treating her with itraconazole, an antifungal, and she just… got so much better. And I think probably because in that case, one of her main immune challenges was some… she was probably exposed to mold, she had probably had colonization in her sinuses or wherever else in her body of the mold. So, that… I think if you can find the main thing that’s… really dragging the immune system down and work on that thing, then hopefully you’ll lighten the load on the immune system to where this Morgelins can take care of itself. Because we do know a lot of people get it and barely get sick at all. A lot of times, people will tell me their spouse, or… their child, or somebody says, oh, they’ve had, like, two tiny lesions, and they’ve had a couple of fibers, and basically, that’s it. So, by that, I’m assuming that You know, this is something that usually only those who are very immune-challenged actually come down with. And that’s what I’ve found through the years, that they are immune-challenged. I’ve had AIDS patients with this. I’ve had people on high-dose corticosteroids because they had an immune… some kind of autoimmune problem.
I’ve had several organ transplant patients, because they’re given strong immunosuppressants to… so they won’t reject the organ. So, it’s not 100% Lyme patients, and that’s the thing where I disagree with some of the researchers who are trying to propose the idea that Morgillon’s is a dermatologic manifestation of Lyme. No, I mean, I know how to diagnose Lyme disease. It’s a clinical diagnosis. I have patients that not only are just zero, zero nothing on hygienics.
They have not one single symptom of tick-borne disease. When you give them antibiotics, they don’t hurt, because they don’t get better. There is no indication that they have Lyme or co-infection, but they have all the awful skin stuff. And in fact, I have found through the years that those people are kind of my hardest ones to treat, because I don’t know what to work with. You know, I don’t… I don’t want to give them all these antibiotics for tick-borne disease if they don’t really have that.
Dr. Deb Muth 14:54
Right, hard to find that initial trigger, right? That’s what we’re always looking.
Dr. Ginger Savely 14:58
Yes, exactly. That industry.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:00
If we can’t find the initial trigger, how do you know where to start? It’s like a guessing game.
Dr. Ginger Savely 15:04
I know, so… and of course, the other thing I’ve discovered through the years is that Another immune challenge that is common to all these patients is mold toxicity. So, if I don’t… can’t find any particular infection to treat. Then I… I start thinking about the possibility of… that the patient is mold toxic, that they are… they are living in now, or previously lived in, a moldy home, or maybe they… sometimes they work in a moldy place.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:38
to him.
Dr. Ginger Savely 15:39
And for, you know, one quarter of the population, this can be… these mycotoxins are just huge immune suppressants. And so. I used to test that genetic haplotype test that Dr. Shoemaker does. I used to do it on all my more jealous patients. every single one of them came out mold susceptible. So after a while, I just stopped doing it, because I kind of got the point. And also, you know, it’s an expensive test, and insurance often doesn’t cover it. So, But anyway, that… that is… excuse me, I gotta take a drink here, my mouth is dry. Okay, so, alright. Now, of course, I have to figure out where I was. What were you saying?
Dr. Deb Muth 16:27
We were talking about mold in Schumacher.
Dr. Ginger Savely 16:28
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 16:30
for that.
Dr. Ginger Savely 16:31
Yeah, so you know, mold is the big thing now, right? I mean, I know you’re looking at… we’re all looking at it. I’ve been in the Lyme world long enough to remember back when we didn’t, and we were always so baffled by some of our patients just didn’t get better. Why aren’t they getting better? I’m doing the same thing with them. They’re not getting better. And then come to find out is, you know, they had this, these mycotoxins that they… their body was not able to detox. You know, these people can’t detox the mycotoxins on their own, so… They’re… they’re quite an immune suppressant if you’ve got those going on, so… There’s other things that hold people back from getting well, of course. I find that my PTSD patients can’t get well unless they’re really actively working on the PTSD by going to therapy groups, whatever, you know, it is.
I find that people who live in a smoky home where people smoke… well, I don’t even take patients who smoke, because that’s just so counterproductive. to getting well, but sometimes you could look at a home where everybody’s smoking, you know, and that passive smoke, too, is so bad, too. So… and then, of course, I’ve got people, unfortunately, that may be living in abusive situations and can’t get out, and that is also another thing that just halts the treatment.
So, you know, everybody… a lot of times people will get online and say, you can never get well from this, don’t even believe anybody that says you can get well. Well, you know, that might be the case in your case, because we don’t know all the various immune challenges you have. But every single patient is different, and that’s why I really can’t publish a protocol or anything like that.
Dr. Deb Muth 18:23
Yeah, because…
Dr. Ginger Savely 18:24
it’s kind of more of an art than a science, almost. You know, you just have to feel your way through it, but I… through the years, I have, kind of. start… I found that there’s two antibiotics. If I start with those two, I’m pretty much always going to get some kind of a good response, and that is, a sulfa drug and clarithromycin, the two of them together. Now, that’s not all I do, but that’s a starting point, and I often tell other doctors, look, if you’re going to refer them to me, get them started on those two drugs, you know, just… that’ll already help some. Yeah. And now, of course, a lot of people are allergic to sulfa, so then we have.
Dr. Deb Muth 19:10
to go.
Dr. Ginger Savely 19:11
We have to go with something else. But there’s… there’s a lot of different combinations, but basically, I’ve found that, like, if I really go after that Bartonella, and I do a combination, like, the sulfa. doxycycline and, rifabutin, for example. Those… those really get us somewhere. But it’s not… never a quick fix, you know, it’s… it takes a lot of patience, because It’s… it’s slow to get over this.
Dr. Deb Muth 19:42
Yeah, it seems like, you know, a lot of what we’re talking about in the tick-borne world these days, too, is immune system, right? And there’s so many new things that we’re learning. I was having a conversation with one of the docs from Invita Medical, and they were saying they are seeing a lot of their Bartonella patients are developing cancer. And so all of these things that suppress our immune system, and there’s so many in the world, right? Do you think that’s partially why so many people get overlooked and misdiagnosed when it comes to a tick-borne illness or a mortgage illness? Because they’re… they’re not looking at the root, they’re not looking at the immune system, they’re just kind of looking at symptoms, and of course, everybody thinks these people are crazy, because they have so many bizarre.
Dr. Ginger Savely 20:26
Symptoms, you know. Well, you know, I always tell my patients, like, if they have to fill out a form or something saying what they have. I always say, say you have Bartonellosis, because Lyme is a trigger word, Magellan’s doesn’t exist. Yes. So, just put you… and you know, when they take that to another doctor. 9 times out of 10, the other doctor doesn’t even know what that is.
Dr. Deb Muth 20:52
they don’t…
Dr. Ginger Savely 20:53
They know what cat scratch disease is, they know that name, and that’s an.
Dr. Deb Muth 20:58
cute.
Dr. Ginger Savely 20:58
Bartonellosis. But if you say Bartonella to them, they’re kind of confused. And so, in a certain sense, that’s kind of a good thing, because it’s better than it being a knee-jerk reaction, like, get out of here, you’re crazy.
Dr. Deb Muth 21:13
Time doesn’t exist, what are you talking about?
Dr. Ginger Savely 21:15
Oh, right.
Dr. Deb Muth 21:16
Right, it’s…
Dr. Ginger Savely 21:17
It’s just a… it’s a trigger word, too, but they’re kind of baffled with the Bartonella, like, oh, wait a minute, what is this?
Dr. Deb Muth 21:23
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 21:24
Yeah, that’s always, I think, a good approach to do. But, yeah, I’m always pointing out to my patients that it’s a lot easier to catch Bartonella than Lyme, because there’s so many… there are more different vectors for Bartonella than any other vector-borne infection. So, there’s a number of different bites you can get where you can get Bartonella, and I notice a lot of my patients start having more gellens after a flea infestation, and flea… fleas can give you Bartonella, correct?
Dr. Deb Muth 21:58
Huh?
Dr. Ginger Savely 21:58
Cat scratches can, too. A lot of them will bite.
Dr. Deb Muth 22:01
noceums?
Dr. Ginger Savely 22:02
It’s like, and in fact, who knows? We don’t even really know all the ones that could possibly give Bartonella, so… Bartonella needs to be really high up on the list of the differential, and it’s not on the list at all with, you know, most.
Dr. Deb Muth 22:20
Hmm.
Dr. Ginger Savely 22:21
I don’t even think infectious disease doctors, but certainly not primary care doctors. So, I don’t know what the connection is with Bartonella. It may just simply be, coincidentally, the same things that treat Bartonella, treat this, who knows? The thing is, to say anything like. so-and-so causes more gelands, we’re not even close to being there, you know, in terms of the little research we have. Sure, we have research that shows the presence of certain pathogens in the lesions. But correlation does not equal causation, so we don’t know what that means, that they’re there. But interestingly, they’re about… I think I put this in my book, even, that they’re about, 15 different kinds of skin lesions, where if the patient has Lyme you can biopsy the lesion, and you’ll find Borrelia, the spirochetes, the causative agent of Lyme, in the lesions.
So, did the Lyme cause those? nobody knows, because Lyme bacteria loves to go to the weakest part of the body, and so it’s gonna go to any, like, a lesion, it’s gonna go there, because it’s a weak part of the body, so… it may be there just for that reason. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s causing it. So, lots and lots of work to do in terms of research on this, but it’s very difficult, because, you know, money, we don’t have money for it, and .
Dr. Deb Muth 24:07
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 24:08
There’s no…
Dr. Deb Muth 24:08
There’s money behind it if we don’t have a drug to fix it.
Dr. Ginger Savely 24:10
Oh, yeah, that’s true. I mean, you know, we just can’t really get anybody interested in it, like CDC, or… you know, they just are… they did such a… you know, they… they just didn’t really put their heart into doing that one little research study they did. They used all the wrong patients. They didn’t even have an inclusion criteria for the patients, and so they actually… admitted patients to the study that, yeah, they didn’t have more tones. You know, they basically admitted everybody who’d been in with something itchy. You know, of course, a lot of those people didn’t have itchy, so it was… it was so crazy. But, yeah, I feel very… constantly very frustrated that… nobody’s really looking into this, because it is amazing what it can do. I have patients with big holes in their faces, you know. I have a patient who developed, cervical cancer while I was treating her. She had the treatment for it. And it all started out, though, when the doctor saw a huge lesion on her cervix, and when trying to get a little scraping, like to do a biopsy. it just… a hole opened up. Just a hole.
Dr. Deb Muth 25:31
Gosh.
Dr. Ginger Savely 25:32
And this is what happens to a lot of my patients, is, like, they develop, kind of, craters in their face. deep holes.
Dr. Deb Muth 25:39
So…
Dr. Ginger Savely 25:40
There are so many aspects to this disease. I mean, it’s way more than just the fibers, the filaments. Right, exactly. There’s so many other odd things that’s going on, you know, they all have this sort of a sticky thing all over their skin. Biofilm? I don’t know, but, you know, that’s… they all complain about that like a black tarry stuff coming out of their skin. All the different things that come out, too, you know, they look like, some of them look… do look like little tiny white maggots, and so you can kind of see why people… Do think that they have some kind of an infestation, because an infestation means when you have something along the lines of a, you know, flea, lice, you know, that sort of thing. But many, many patients come to me convinced that that’s what they have. I don’t know, maybe some of my patients do have that as well, but some of the symptoms are very unique to Morgellins, and primarily one. The one symptom that is totally unique to Morgellons is these filaments of different colors that come out. And you can compare Morgillins to, in fact, I did in my book, to any number Of, dermatologic manifestations, and… you can find them that are almost exactly like it, but always the one difference being that Margellis has the fibers, and that other diagnosis does not. So, many of my patients have been misdiagnosed with one of those other things, because the… I think the… the dermatologist or whoever gave the diagnosis wasn’t really looking carefully and didn’t really believe the patient when they said they had filaments. They usually think, oh, they’re just from your clothes, they’re just stuck in you.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:32
don’t know, they, they don’t.
Dr. Ginger Savely 27:34
Yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:34
unfortunately.
Dr. Ginger Savely 27:36
But they don’t have the curiosity either, which is mind-blowing.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:40
I know, right?
Dr. Ginger Savely 27:41
Yeah. If it’s…
Dr. Deb Muth 27:42
Just kind of straightforward, black and white, that’s all I do. So, Dr. Ginger, how do we help patients feel believed again after being dismissed so long and by so many doctors that.
Dr. Ginger Savely 27:55
Yeah, huh?
Dr. Deb Muth 27:56
just don’t know, just don’t know what they don’t know, but they’re trying to be helpful, and unfortunately, sometimes they’re not. They’re hurting the patient by telling them that this is all in their head, or…
Dr. Ginger Savely 28:06
Yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 28:06
It’s just.
Dr. Ginger Savely 28:07
I mean, of course, we just need some more… much more education of the doctors, right?
Dr. Deb Muth 28:13
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 28:13
They’re the ones that really need… but there are some things that patients do need to be very careful about, and this is just all in the world of learning how to tiptoe around doctors. One thing, never say the M word. If you go in, never say… don’t even suggest it. Just go in there, like, kind of dumb, like, oh, you know, I’ve got this thing going on, what do you think it is? You know, you don’t want to do that. You don’t ever want to suggest a diagnosis either, just act stupid, because that way… They’ll really look into it, you know?
Dr. Deb Muth 28:49
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 28:50
You suggest a diagnosis, then they get irritated, and they just don’t want to even look into it any further. So, you do just sort of have to play dumb a little bit, and just go, gosh, what could this be? I can… you know, and tell the symptoms. Now, even my patients have done that, though. they… a lot of times, they feel, maybe the doctor doesn’t say they’re crazy, but they just feel like they’re kind of brushed aside, like, yeah, well, okay, just put some cortisone cream on it, or, you know, that kind of thing. And I think that just sort of speaks to what’s happened in our medical system lately. I’m very disturbed to hear the stories of people saying they… they… the doctor spent very little time with them. Seemed rushed, didn’t even look at them, didn’t even touch them, certainly didn’t look a magnifier. And it’s… I’m very distressed by the state of healthcare in our country, how this is happening to people. People feel very, very disillusioned with healthcare nowadays. They don’t trust doctors anymore, because, you know, they’ve loved.
Dr. Deb Muth 29:58
Right.
Dr. Ginger Savely 29:58
Right. So many times, and so, yeah, I don’t know what we’re gonna do about that predicament.
Dr. Deb Muth 30:05
I know, my mother-in-law’s 86, and she told me when she went for her physical last year, they… they never took her clothes off, they didn’t even listen to her heart or lungs, or feel her liver, nothing. There was… I said, well, that’s not a physical exam!
Dr. Ginger Savely 30:19
You know what that is? It’s a Medicare wellness check.
Dr. Deb Muth 30:22
That’s a…
Dr. Ginger Savely 30:22
You have to get a Medicare well… but all… this is a Medicare wellness check. They ask you, like, 5 questions. Have you fallen? You know, da-da-da-da. They ask you the questions. I think they weigh you and, you know, review… So, no, it’s not a real physical, it’s just something to make Medicare happy. But, yeah, I know people start being overlooked as they get older. They just kind of, you know, we’re old, whatever, you know, so they don’t… they don’t worry so much. And I’ve had patients as old as… I guess my oldest patient with this was 88. And those… those older people are so miserable, too, when they have this, and they really are just not so much told they’re crazy, but just kind of, whatever. Yeah, their doctors are just not… not particularly interested in what’s going on with them.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:17
You’re old, what more do you expect? I hear that a lot from my older clients, that that’s.
Dr. Ginger Savely 31:21
And they’re.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:21
old.
Dr. Ginger Savely 31:22
I remember when my father lived to be 94, and the thing that frustrated… and he was a PhD in physiology, so he’d actually worked with MDs a lot, and…
Dr. Deb Muth 31:32
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 31:32
He, he, he used to get so angry, about, about that whole situation, you know? It’s… he, would often say, you know, I go to the doctor, I complain about a pain, and they laugh and say, what do you expect? You’re 90. You know, and my dad was always very active to the end, and he didn’t… it was unusual for him to have the pain, and you know, it should have been looked into rather than just… scoffed at like that.
Dr. Deb Muth 32:03
missed.
Dr. Ginger Savely 32:03
It is a problem, you know, in our system, and you don’t find too many specialists in advanced care, in geriatric, whatever you want to call it. I’m… I’m fast approaching that age myself, so I hate to use the word geriatric I think I’m technically geriatric right now, but I can’t…
Dr. Deb Muth 32:25
We’ll just bypass, that’s just a number.
Dr. Ginger Savely 32:27
Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, so…
Dr. Deb Muth 32:32
Andrew, this is a great conversation. I always like to end our show with one last question, and this is always a doozy, so you’ll have to put your thinking cap, or you’ll have to calm yourself when I ask this one. If there was one thing you could change in our medical system today, what would it be?
Dr. Ginger Savely 32:52
that… Well, it would all have to do with insurance, because insurance is the thing that’s making doctors feel so rushed that they can’t really take time and listen to the patient and properly examine them, because in order to make enough money, with what insurance reimburses them, they just have to, you know, move them in.
Dr. Deb Muth 33:12
knowing that.
Dr. Ginger Savely 33:13
And so, you know, if doctors were given… and I bet some of them would really enjoy being able to spend more time with the patient and really listen, but they just can’t because of the way the way it’s all rigged up with health insurance. And so, I want… I want to think that doctors would be happy to do that if they were able to, but, you know, that’s the thing is, I remember writing a paper, even when I was in my undergraduate. about the importance of validation, and this is way before I knew anything about Morgellons, but it was just, like, a big deal to me, like, you know, people need to be listened to and heard, and not brushed off, and validation… You know, when people are validated. they already feel 50% better. It’s just, you know, people will say that after the first visit with me, and I haven’t even done anything yet, that they already feel better, because somebody’s finally taking them seriously, and listening to them, and really… caring, and that’s… I mean, shouldn’t that be basic to all healthcare? I would think it should be, but it’s just not always the case these days, I see.
Dr. Deb Muth 34:31
Yeah, I agree, I agree. Well, for people who are listening to us, and they’re like, I want to talk with her, I want to meet her, how do they find you?
Dr. Ginger Savely 34:41
Well, the email address is Lyme DC, Lime, L-Y-M-E-D-C as in District of Columbia, that’s where my office is, limedc at gmail.com. And that is, the address to ask for a new patient packet. I am still accepting new patients. Usually takes a couple months to get in, but I have people fill out paperwork first. sometimes… I mean, I accept most patients, but there’s occasionally, when I look at the history, if they’ve already been to 15 other Lyme doctors, I might not. But, you know, I just like to know in advance as much as I can.
Dr. Deb Muth 35:24
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 35:24
about the patient, because it’s very hard to… you know, I… I can’t really give advice to Mordellin’s people who just talk to me briefly, because, oh my gosh, I need to know so much, I need to know…
Dr. Deb Muth 35:34
I’m.
Dr. Ginger Savely 35:34
so much about their history, and their… I mean, it’s just… and I think people get frustrated with me because you know, come on, just give me… give me some tips here real quick, and I was like, it’s so dependent on your story. It’s so individualized that I can’t… I don’t feel even good about trying to give advice to somebody just randomly out of the blue like that. And it… I guess maybe it makes people frustrated and makes them think, oh, you just want the money or something. No, I mean, it’s a lot of responsibility for me, what I do. I’ve been doing… I’ve been taking care of more jealous patients for 25 years. It’s put me at very high risk. I’ve been investigated before by my board, and I’ll tell you, it was not… not a very pleasant thing to go through. And so I said, yeah, I have to keep a little bit of a low profile, and, you know…
Yep. And so, people just need to understand that if somebody is taking care of their mortgage, that the healthcare provider who’s taking care of them, they’re taking a personal risk, because they’re doing something that’s not accepted. By the general medical population and by their regulatory board, and so they could very well be called out and even lose their license for doing it.
Dr. Deb Muth 36:58
Yeah, very much so. It’s good to… to point that out, because these doctors, we’re all putting our neck on the line to help these patients, and sometimes the patients don’t appreciate that or don’t understand that, and they can put us in arm’s way without… sometimes without realizing it, sometimes on purpose.
Dr. Ginger Savely 37:16
You know, most of my patients, though, are just… they’re so protective of me. You know, they go to the ER for something, and then they’ll say, well, who’s treating your…
Dr. Deb Muth 37:27
anonymous.
Dr. Ginger Savely 37:27
so-called Mordellins. well, don’t worry about it, I have a good provider. You know, they just won’t even give my name. But like you say, sometimes accidentally it has happened, and then I get a call from some ER doctor, and it’s usually ER.
Dr. Deb Muth 37:44
remote.
Dr. Ginger Savely 37:44
room doctor yelling and screaming at me, and, you know.
Dr. Deb Muth 37:48
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 37:48
Like, oh…
Dr. Deb Muth 37:50
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 37:50
So…
Dr. Deb Muth 37:51
It’s unfortunate, isn’t it? I had a patient recently see another GI doctor who said, if I prescribed 3 different antibiotics at one time, I’d lose my license. And I’m like, oh, well, not really, but… and, you know, and it upset the patient quite a bit, because now they look at me and they think I’m doing something wrong, because the conventional person told them that it was a problem, and it’s really sad how those things happen.
Dr. Ginger Savely 38:16
Well, this is something that’s really gotten me very annoyed lately, is when pharmacists see things prescribed that they’re worried about, their job is to contact the doctor and say.
Dr. Deb Muth 38:28
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 38:29
Are you really sure about this? You know, no, what they’re doing is scaring the patients to death.
Dr. Deb Muth 38:35
Right.
Dr. Ginger Savely 38:35
They’re saying, okay, here’s what your doctor gave you, but I’m just going to warn you, I mean, geez, taking all those at once, gee, I wouldn’t, you know, and that’s the way they’re talking. So then they lose faith in me, and they don’t realize I’ve been doing this so long, and I’ve had so many thousands of people take this. I know from experience not going to hurt them. But, you know, the pharmacist just read it in a book somewhere, so they assume that it’s going to be awful for.
Dr. Deb Muth 39:02
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 39:02
But that’s… that’s very unprofessional of them to do that. That’s not really their job to do that, but I… it’s happening a lot, I see that.
Dr. Deb Muth 39:11
happening a lot. Instead of just picking up the phone and calling the doctor. They’re, like you said, upsetting the patient, or calling the board, or those kinds of things. And what happened to that professional courtesy and that exchange of our knowledge bases? You know, I’ve gone to the pharmacy and picked something up, and the pharmacist looks at me, he says, I don’t know what this drug is. And it happened during the pandemic, when I was prescribed hydroxychloroquine, and I’m like, you don’t know what hydroxychloroquine is?
Dr. Ginger Savely 39:41
Pharmacist? I was like…
Dr. Deb Muth 39:43
Really? And it was an older pharmacist, and I was like, really? And I… I was like, at first I thought, are you just saying that because you don’t understand why you’re giving it to somebody, or are you saying that to hope that I say something different?
Dr. Ginger Savely 39:57
Yes.
Dr. Deb Muth 39:57
Really surprising to me how many medications…
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:00
Question?
Dr. Deb Muth 40:01
Yeah, yeah. How many medications the pharmacist really claim they don’t know anything about, or they don’t know how to use it? That’s their job, to know about.
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:10
Sorry, it’s.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:11
It’s very scary these days.
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:12
I’m seeing a lot more incompetence in pharmacists, so many scary mistakes being made all the time now. All started with the pandemic. Yep. Ever since the pandemic, pharmacies are making tons of mistakes.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:25
Yeah.
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:25
I remember getting so mad at one one time. I said, look, you have one of the two careers where you’re never, ever allowed to make a mistake. Air traffic controllers and you.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:35
That’s right.
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:36
Unfortunately, I’m sorry for you, but you cannot make mistakes.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:40
Yeah, they can’t. I mean, it can be deadly for them, and they do.
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:44
Yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:45
Unfortunately, I think, you know, it’s who they’re hiring, it’s the corporate aspect of the pharmacy these days.
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:52
Probably so.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:53
Yeah, it’s a… it’s a big mess.
Dr. Ginger Savely 40:55
Well, I don’t… I didn’t mean this little part here to scare people. I’m sorry about that, I didn’t… didn’t intend to do that, but I just feel like one thing I would do… I do, is if I… if you go pick up a prescription, don’t walk away from the counter yet. Look at it. Look at the bottle, make sure…
Dr. Deb Muth 41:17
Hmm?
Dr. Ginger Savely 41:18
That’s what you’re supposed to get, that the quantity’s right, that everything’s good.
Dr. Deb Muth 41:23
Because once…
Dr. Ginger Savely 41:23
you walk away from the… you don’t have any recourse. Right. So before you even leave, you know, just… just check it out and make sure. That’s right. And a lot of times, people are given the wrong quantity, or any number So, they.
Dr. Deb Muth 41:36
They don’t tell you that your insurance won’t dispense the full amount.
Dr. Ginger Savely 41:40
Right, they just, they just…
Dr. Deb Muth 41:41
They don’t have it all on stock, so they’re only giving you a partial fill. They won’t tell you any of those things, and then you.
Dr. Ginger Savely 41:47
Right.
Dr. Deb Muth 41:48
Call and get that information from them after the fact, and it’s not fun to try to do that, for sure.
Dr. Ginger Savely 41:53
Oh my gosh, no. I hate calling pharmacies.
Dr. Deb Muth 41:56
I know, me too. Well, Dr. Ginger, this was such a great conversation. Is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with before you and I sign off?
Dr. Ginger Savely 42:04
I just want them to have hope. That’s the most important thing. Because many patients with Morgellons do give up hope, and there’s a high suicide rate in this group. And, you know, don’t… don’t give up hope. Don’t give up. There’s… there are people out there who can help you. I’m not the only one. There aren’t many of us, but there are some other I would be able to refer you to if I can’t take you on. And, you know, just… Just know that there are those of us out there who believe in this, we know it’s real, and we’re just desperately trying to see what we can do to help.
Dr. Deb Muth 42:46
Well, thank you for all your years of support and patient-centered approach. It’s definitely a blessing to have you. Thank you.
Dr. Ginger Savely 42:54
Alright, thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Deb Muth 43:01
Where am I? Thank you so much for joining me today on Let’s Talk Wellness Now. Dr. Savely’s decades of experience working with Lyme disease, co-infection, and Morgellins, and your compassionate, patient-centered approach. are such an important reminder that healing starts with being heard, believed, and truly understood. If this conversation resonates with you, I encourage you to share it with someone who may be searching for answers and hope on their healing journey. Remember, complex chronic illness is not something you have to navigate alone. For more information about Dr. Savely’s work, visit her on her website, and we’ll put those links below. And until next time, I’m Dr. Deb, reminding you to take care of your body, mind, and spirit. Be well, and we’ll see you on the next episode.