![Trista Sutter Says Its Very Scary When Husband Ryan Cant Push Through Lyme Disease Symptoms](/https/www.usmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/feature-Trista-Sutter-Says-Its-Very-Scary-When-Husband-Ryan-Cant-Push-Through-Lyme-Disease-Symptoms.jpg?w=1000&quality=86&strip=all)
Trista Sutter offered an update on her husband Ryan Sutter’s ongoing battle with Lyme disease.
The former star of The Bachelorette, 51, praised her husband’s strength during an episode of “The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever with Chris Hanson” which aired on Monday, April 8. According to Trista, Ryan, 49, is doing “better.”
“He definitely has a lot of ups and downs still and really would like to feel better at least most of the time. He says he’s about 80 percent,” she said. “I would go to his doctor’s appointments with him because he is so incredibly humble. So he’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to complain about whatever’s going on with me,’ even if it’s really significant.”
She continued, “I would tell his doctors, ‘You don’t understand, he has an incredibly high pain tolerance.’ If it was me that was going through what he’s going through, I would be bedridden every single day and maybe even hospitalized. He is able to get through this because he’s freaking superhuman. I don’t understand it.”
Lyme disease is an illness transmitted through the bite of an infected black-legged tick, with early-stage symptoms including flu-like symptoms, joint pain, fatigue or a bullseye-shaped rash around the area of the bite, per Mayo Clinic. In its later stages, symptoms of Lyme have been known to include paralysis, agonizing joint pain and headaches, neurological problems, as well as inflammation of the brain and heart, among other symptoms.
![Trista Sutter Says Its Very Scary When Husband Ryan Cant Push Through Lyme Disease Symptoms](/https/www.usmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Trista-Sutter-Says-Its-Very-Scary-When-Husband-Ryan-Cant-Push-Through-Lyme-Disease-Symptoms.jpg?w=1000&quality=86&strip=all)
According to Trista, who married Ryan in 2003 and shares 2 kids with him, her husband is usually able to “push through” the worst of his symptoms, so “it’s very scary” when he admits that he doesn’t feel well.
“I have never understood it but I’m grateful because had he not had the kind of tolerance he has, it would’ve been even harder. And it still is,” she said on the podcast.
Ryan was diagnosed with Lyme disease and Epstein-Barr virus in 2021 after he had been battling mysterious symptoms for months prior. “My immune system was weakened through exposures to toxins and especially to mold,” Ryan explained in May 2021 on an episode of Trista’s “Better Etc.” podcast. “[Lyme disease] seems like something that I will always have. Now I know, and I can build back my immune system to fight it off.”
After taking time off work to deal with the illness, the Bachelorette alum returned to his job as a firefighter in January 2022. “After two major surgeries and nearly six months, yesterday was my first day back in the firehouse,” he wrote via Instagram at the time. “It was a good day back on the job.”