03/28/2026
Hi everyone,
We wanted to start by apologizing for not being open yesterday morning. This winter has been tricky, Tesa has been dealing with a lot of health issues and yesterday it was unfortunately just not possible to open with everything else going on. We thought this would be a good opportunity to give you all a brief update on the situation.
For those of you who don't know, Tesa has been dealing with chronic illness for roughly the last 15 years. The first five years she was misdiagnosed and mistreated, leading to additional complications along with what ended up being Lyme disease. At her worst she was 80 pounds, unable to walk, unable to eat, jaundiced, and frankly we almost lost her. I won't spend too much time on that, it was a long and rough and life-changing journey for our entire family. It's not something you'd know if you have seen her since we've moved up to Door County. It has been a long journey with the help of family, friends, and some wonderful medical professionals who it took us a long time to find. We are incredibly blessed.
Unfortunately in December, she caught a bad flu and her body was not able to fight it off. It became a spiral of all the co-infections that came along with her Lyme just having the perfect opportunity to attack her body again and she has not been back to work since. She is staying with family in Milwaukee and St Louis who are shuttling her between all her appointments and specialists and taking care of her so Dad and I can keep things running to the best of our ability up here.
We are doing out very best to get things ready for the season, but with that being said, Tesa will not be here much if at all. Hopefully that changes as the season goes on, but even if she's able to come back up to Ellison Bay she will need to take many steps back for her health. We thank everyone for their care and questions, but this isn't always easy for us to talk about while we're in the middle of service, so for that reason I hope to get a page on the website up where we can direct all of you for updates. We do go down to see her quite frequently so for those asking what they can do for us, cards for her are accepted and encouraged. She's not able to talk on the phone most days, so this would be the best way to let her know you are thinking about her. It truly helps so much to remind her she is not in this alone.
Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and continued support
❤️
Joe, Tesa, & Alysa
