I grew up in Northern Indiana. I am your age. I got a “rock” (tick) stuck in my eyebrow when I was about 12. Our family would “camp out” - bring blankets out and sleep under the stars on the lawn on a summer night. After the rock, I was diagnosed with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and, I assume, treated in some way. I can’t remember all details but RMSF did not make sense to me because it is pancake flat where we lived so I remembered that and the “rock”. A decade later, Lyme became a thing. Another decade later alpha-gal became a thing. (I haven’t been able to stomach red meat since about the age of 13. I get sick.).
In my teens, my heart started to just start racing for no reason. My mom poopooed it because “everyone has that - you’re not special”. In my thirties, I had several bouts of bell’s palsy. After my second child, I developed a leg swelling and my doctor checked me for arthritis. It wasn’t arthritis tho, according to the x-rays. He checked my ANA and one doctor thought I had Lupus and told me to prepare my family to expect my death in 5 years. I found a small reference to Lyme in a book on arthritis and asked my family doctor to consider Lyme because I had all the markers. He started me on a 2 week trial of meds (too short) and I eventually found a Lyme specialist who diagnosed Lyme on symptoms, not tests. The Lyme tests often give inaccurate results. He treated me with Doxycycline and Probenicid for about a year. I had Herxheimer reactions to the dead bugs and he treated me until the Herx stopped. That was about 35 years ago. I have had nothing that was definitely Lyme since. My ANA went back to normal (considered an impossibility). I still can’t eat red meat though. That is probably permanent.