Lessons Learned Through Lyme & Loss
My struggle with Lyme can be boiled down to a single quote

My Story
It was the darkest period of my life. What started out as an exciting new chapter quickly became the most severe test of my perseverance and personal pain tolerance I’ve experienced thus far.
It all started last June. I was so excited and filled with hope as I moved into my new apartment, living on my own for the first time. I was looking forward to starting my new role at BOSR and learning everything I could about survey research. Most of all, I was overjoyed about having the time and space necessary to focus on starting a software company which would make tools for sociological researchers and mental health professionals.
But the excitement was short-lived as I spent the next eight months battling a severe infestation of 20+ species of mites, insects, and rodents. Rather than helping me through this difficult period, my landlords ignored and gaslighted me. It came to head in February when I used my tax return to move, finally. Unfortunately, the pain only increased as I had already contracted Lyme disease with a Borrelia co-infection from the mite and bug bites.

I quickly fell so ill I couldn’t even hold a spoon to eat my oatmeal with. While I was too weak to move my belongings into my new apartment, my landlords hired three men from Craigslist to take it all to some unknown location. They said it’s all gone for good, so I essentially got robbed of ~90% of my belongings.
Losing My Mind
The worst part of the ordeal was losing my perception of reality and sense of self. I tried to fight through it because I am a workaholic, but I believe that backfired as it exposed many people to the temporary psychosis I endured as a result of the illness and subsequent medications. For example, I was having full-on hallucinations by the time I sent in my application for Y Combinator (thankfully, and unsurprisingly, I did not get an interview for Summer 2017)
I put on a full face of makeup so they couldn’t tell how sick I was, but you can still see how swollen my face was from an allergic reaction to certain medications I was taking and I was clearly absorbed fully in my own little world.
Thankfully, my sister disregarded my request to keep it to herself when I told her I thought my hair was worms and I’d spent the last day at work receding my hairline on one side by a half inch by removing them. She told my mother who promptly drove to Lincoln and brought me to Colorado where I’ve spent the last 4 months resting and healing.
Losing Myself
The worst part of the ideal was losing myself. I already struggled with very severe ADHD and Lyme produces ADHD-like symptoms in any human. The last EEG I took showed a standard deviation drop in working memory and no matter what my psychiatrist did, he could not bring my attention anywhere near the normal range.
Suddenly, everything I’d ever known and everything I ever was were violently ripped away, and nobody could tell me if I would ever get any of it back.
Recovery has been almost like recovering from a stroke. I’ve had to re-learn how to do basic things like reading, typing, driving, cooking, etc. I lost my ability to draw meaning from even slightly complex language, as I shockingly realized when I tried and failed miserably to work remotely one week. I haven’t been able to communicate with friends or family because I simply haven’t had the capacity to understand their words and respond appropriately.
Everything I’d ever hated about myself became exaggerated while, suddenly, everything I’d ever known and everything I ever was were violently ripped away, and nobody could tell me if I would ever get any of it back. Everything good I’d achieved in life came from being intelligent and hard-working. I always took a full class load in college while working at least two jobs to pay my living expenses myself. The insights I gained worth starting a company over happened because of my sharp mind. But now I could neither work nor think, making me feel idiotic, parasitic, and, most damningly, full to brim with shame and self-loathing.
My Present
If to survive is to find some meaning in our suffering, the meaning I’ve found in mine can be boiled down by a single sentence spoken by Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club:

I’ve had more false starts in this recovery than I can count and every time, I became more afraid to hope. I’m certainly still not at 100%, but for the first time since I got sick I am not afraid to say I expect to make a full recovery. Slowly but surely, I’ve been doing the work of re-building my internal model to prepare myself to interact with the world again.
I’ve recently proven to myself that, although I’m still working on building my stamina, I am ready to live on my own again. I’m ready to go home to Lincoln. I’m ready to ease into engaging with friends and family again. And most of all, I’m ready to work!
I want to start a company, and I want to grow it into a multi-billion dollar unicorn.
The gift of this whole ordeal is that, by starting with a completely blank slate, I was able to think about what I want to do with my life. If I wanted to move away from Lincoln, now would be the perfect time. If I wanted to apply to other jobs and take my career in a new direction, now would be the perfect time. If I wanted to bail on starting a company, now would be the perfect time as I got sick right before we launched, so we never actually did.
But none of that is what I want, and I’m 100% certain in a way one can only be when they have nothing left to lose and nothing left to prove. I want to go back to my day job at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL)’s Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) to continue learning as much as I can about my industry while helping them expand so they can do even more of the important work they do for the University, the State, and all of their non-profit and academic clients.
Most of all, I want to start a company, and I want to grow it into a multi-billion dollar unicorn. I hope by working at the University upon my arrival to Lincoln, I will better learn exactly which tools social and behavioral researchers need so we can build the most useful suite of products possible.
Our Future
I do not know the specifics of how my life will unfold. All I know is that I wherever this journey takes me, I will do everything in my power to promote my most strongly held belief, that humans matter most.
Humans Matter Most
- I believe that maximizing the wellbeing and minimizing the suffering of as many members of our species as possible should be our core mission as humans.
- I believe that, in a future where we face forces with the potential to destroy our wholes species, such as rapidly-spreading diseases, climate change, and deep artificial intelligence, we have to start working together much more efficiently and viewing our in-group as the species as a whole.
- I believe every human on Earth, on Mars, or anywhere else in the universe, should have the same, basic, universal rights.
I believe the best way to achieve these goals is to start a company, based mainly on knitting together IBM Watson APIs. The company will start out with something simple that can take over a niche in an ultimately huge market, like transcription.
Next, we’ll add more tools to the suite for social and behavioral researchers, especially the tools needed to conduct sociological surveys and make polling accurate again. See my previous blog post if you want to know the reasons the 2016 election polls were so off in the first place.
These tools will allow us to uncover all of the laws of social physics. That is an important task because it will allow us to objectively measure the wellbeing of all humans and will provide both narrow and deep AI with clear rules about what it means to hurt a human and how to avoid that outcome. I believe that is the #1 thing we can do to keep humans safe, which should be our top priority because humans matter most!
Unsolved Problems
I would very much like to go back home to Lincoln next month to start building momentum and building my company again in order to realize this vision for the future of our species. But there are a few barriers holding me back that I just can’t knock down on my own in my weakened state.
On the most basic level, I will get evicted next month if I can’t raise the $500 needed to pay my rent. That would mean I have to stay in Colorado for at least a year longer, working a low-wage job in either food service or a grow house until I can afford to move back to my home base with my team and my customers.
When I do get back, I will need to be able to take care of myself. I will need to purchase food and medicine. I will need to pay car and renter’s insurance. I will need electricity and the internet. Once I start working, it will take a few months for me to get back on my feet and be completely self-sufficient.
If I cannot take effectively care of my physical and mental wellbeing during this most crucial juncture in my recovery, I may never have another chance to start a multi-billion dollar unicorn. I may never have another chance to promote my core value, that humans matter most. I may never have another chance to fully pursue the life I feel I was always destined to lead.
Lastly, and I’ll admit this is more a want than a need, I’d like to be able to furnish my apartment re-build my wardrobe. Almost everything I owned was stolen, the few clothes I do have don’t fit because I lost 30 pounds from this illness, and this is the extent of my remaining furniture:


How You Can Help
Donate to my GoFundMe account now. It’s quick and easy and I’ve always seen donations deposited into my bank account the next day!
- If you believe that humans matter most and you want to see a world where that value is lived and realized by all, then please, donate now.
- If you’d like the opportunity to invest in the earliest stages of a multi-billion dollar unicorn while we’re still in 2017 to remain a viable option, then please, donate now.
- If you know and love me personally and want to see me back on my feet, or if you were simply inspired by my story and want to see it have a happy ending, then please, donate now.

To everyone who has already donated, thank you so much! It really helped me with paying for medicines, doctor’s visits, and other medical expenses :)
To Anyone Still Struggling
There are three pieces of advice I would give to anybody currently suffering from Lyme or going though any other severely dark time: listen to Sia, never give up, and remember to celebrate the little things, even if it’s just still being alive when stupid, arbitrary bacteria tried its best to kill you.
