The End & The Beginning of The End of The Beginning and the Beginning of the End etc.

Another long journey only leads to a longer one. That's life. Right? That's what they tell you. A long, long journey.

I have Lyme disease. It attacks virtually every organ in your body and makes you unable to walk, think, remember, and causes unbearable agony. If you don't believe me... oh just go out in the woods and ask a tick to climb aboard and you won't be the one laughing. Especially if you live in Canada.

Ahh Canada. Great country. Nice government (generally), internationally well-liked, free school and health care-> wait. I just hit on my greatest problem. The free health care system. I appreciate that everyone is treated equally and gets all the basic human rights ie) healthcare unlike our southern neighbors BUT. BUT. BUT. I went, on my last legs and on the end of my nerve to the US of A, hoping someone there would help me. Crazy, right? I mean we have GREAT healthcare at home? WRONG. Actually, dead wrong. If I had stayed in Canada, I would have gone down hill and died. I would have died undiagnosed. The doctors would still be standing there, scratching their heads, never able to read the bright green signs of Lyme.

You see, in my beautiful province of BC, there are under 10 cases of Lyme reported by doc's every year. I will not be the 11th. And the dozens of people that I have met in the supermarkets, in the street, in my school and coffeehouse won't become statistics either. Because Lyme does not *exist* in BC. It doesn't even exist in Canada. I can't walk, can't remember words, faces, names and places, see terrifying things in hallucinations, I'm in mind-insane-driving pain, my joints ache unbearably and my lips crack, peel and burn (to make it brief) because of a disease I can't possibly have 'cause I live in Canada. Still, with 28 out of the common 38 symptoms, seven doctors refused to test me. A test, which throws out false positives and negatives, making the results so inaccurate that only 34% get it right. It's almost comical, in a sadistic way. Surely 75% of the common symptoms would classify me as having Lyme disease, but that's not good enough for my numerous Canadian doctors. I was saved by two Canadian people, who had ears and hearts and guts: a Naturopath and retired Lyme doctor. My naturopath tested me for Lyme disease, not at a Canadian lab or by using the standard Canadian test, but at a lab in California called Igenix. My blood was screened using a test that up here in cozy Canada the doctors were ignorant to. And after months of suffering and weeks of anxious waiting for the results, I turned up positive. Previously though, retired Doctor Murakami of Hope, BC, listened over the phone to my growing list of bizarre symptoms and concluded by giving me a clinical diagnosis of Lyme. I'm lucky. I was diagnosed and I'm not lying in bed or taking the wrong meds because my doc said I had chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, MS, arthritis, and even ALS.

Are you seeing the picture?

Are you seeing what we're up against?
Cause I am. Cause I'm feeling it in my BONES.

Some scientists believe that if Lyme would be taken seriously, its victim count in the USA would be higher than AIDS. I mean this is serious stuff! And because I was so desperately ill and 7 different doctors including our GP, his walk-in clinic doctors,
3 ER docs, 2 pediatricians, and a pediatric rheumatologist couldn't figure it out, I left. Walked out on the healthcare system and government I had previously believed to be so great.

To them, I would say BITE ME, but gosh something already did.