A former NFL star turned reality star is opening up about his battle with Lyme disease. 51-year-old Ryan Sutter contracted the disease in 2020.
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He's been dealing with the symptoms ever since. The former NFL and Bachelorette star says he's suffered from chronic fatigue as a result of the disease.
"I'm at a pretty good place. I think the majority of my days are good, with a few bad ones sprinkled in there," he told People. "I've kind of learned how to handle those. If I pay close enough attention, I can feel the onset of things coming on. And then I'll just make sure I don't overdo it or overexert myself. Or make sure I'm hydrated and taking all the supplements I'm supposed to take and all that sort of stuff. I just pay closer attention."
Living with Lyme Disease
While he hasn't got to this dark place himself, Sutter said having Lyme disease made him emphathize with those driven to take their own lives.
"It's the first time I've ever sympathized with suicide," he says. "I was never like, 'I need to go commit suicide.' But I understood that [chronically ill] people get to this level of frustration where they just feel like they're going to feel like this for the rest of their lives. Or be a burden on everybody that they're around."
That being said, he said having Lyme disease has been very challenging.
"You think, I don't know what my purpose in life is, and if there is no purpose to it, if it's just getting up every day and feeling like this... It really hurts me to think that so many people are in that kind of pain and don't think they'll ever get out of it."
He's tried to focus on just taking things one day at a time.
He explained, "As long as I can keep going, moving forward, I feel like that keeps it at bay. But compared to when I first got diagnosed, it's like night and day. So if I refer back to that time, I'm always like, I'll take this a hundred times out of a hundred. It's way better than what it used to be.mAlso, the mindset I've developed is that it's just not going to be what gets me off the rails."
