I have been getting a lot of calls, emails, and facebook contacts from across Canada. One from a salesman. Many from fellow lyme-sufferers who were deeply touched by such a high-profile show FINALLY giving some visibility to a disease that has taken its toll on so many Canadians, and yet for many reasons, some obvious and some unfathomable, remains largely invisible. And many from people with ideas to help me.

I know that the show touched a lot of nerves. The Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada posted a rebuttal to the W5 show, and The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation posted a very good response to that. Personally, I have a number of friends who are medical doctors. They care very much about all of their patients, including those that they might suspect of having lyme disease. The problem is systemic. Even if a doctor really wants to do everything possible to help a patient who is exhibiting early symptoms of lyme disease, the tests aren’t accurate, an eager medical response often brings an investigation from the provincial college of physicians and surgeons, and the general medical support infrastructure isn’t conducive to an informed and timely response.

Back to me for a moment… I found the following a while ago on one of the lyme support forums that I frequent.

I try to remember, at least once each day, just how ghastly-bad some of the days in the past were for me with this disease, and how happy I would have been on any one of those terrible days if I could just feel as I feel now. it’s all relative. Then I repeat the word, ‘Patience, patience’, take a deep breath, and try to keep moving forward, thinking how much better and therefore, how much happier I must be now, if I can only just remember how far I’ve come. I project this slow recovery pace forward, but also pay my respects to my endurance in the past that got me here. It’s that stubborn endurance that wil get me there, to recovery.