After several months of trying to get people on board with the VOCAL initiative, I have 251 people on my database. There are thousands of people across Canada that have either had Lyme or have it. There are thousands of care-givers. There are thousands of people with pets that have been diagnosed with Lyme. How can we get more people on board?

It’s a fairly straight-forward initiative. On Saturday, June 3, 2017, there will be a Canada-wide day of Lyme awareness. Each province has a coordinator (and team) working to pull together an event(s) that they feel will help raise awareness and bring people out. The goal is to have thousands of people out on the 3rd at the various events and to finally get the attention of the medical community and politicians.

I can’t even get folks to say that if they are around on the 3rd that they will attend to show support.

So, what will it take to get people to realize that the issue of Lyme and co-infections is not being adequately dealt with in this country and to get them to jump to the conclusion that at some point, in the very near future, it could be them, or someone they love, that is now going down the Lyme hole. Does a celebrity have to speak up? Must the Doctors that are secretly giving antibiotics to their patients finally have to speak up? Must the Veterinarians that are seeing it constantly in their practices and are now seeing symptoms in some of their clients “parents” speak up?

Yes, there are more Doctors now treating upon a tick bite. There are more Doctors that are taking the issue more seriously. However, these Doctors are few and far between. Many Doctors have little to no knowledge about Lyme and even less about possible co-infections. The information is there for them to read but they do not avail themselves of it because they are being told by the “experts” that Lyme is rare, hard to get and easy to treat. That is no longer the case!

So, back to my question. How do we get people to finally realize what a serious issue Lyme and co-infections are in this country? What is it going to take? Who is it going to take to make them finally listen?

I truly want to know!

In my previous post I mentioned that I was going to see an Endocrinologist. While I didn’t hold out much hope since I had seen the same one a few years ago, I didn’t expect it to be a total waste of time. Unfortunately, that’s what it ended up being.

As soon as I entered her office, the first thing I noticed was the big poster on the wall with the brand name Synthroid on it! I may as well have just gotten up and left the office then and there. Instead I wasted about an hour of my (and her) time.

At the end of our discussion, she basically said that she didn’t think my thyroid was causing my symptoms and to investigate other things like my diet, my sleep habits (sleep apnea?), etc. As if I hadn’t tried just about everything that I could over the 16 or so years of being on Synthroid!

Fortunately, I received a comment to my last post (thanks Sue) directing me to someone that I finally saw this week. After a very informative meeting, I left with an at-home test to do and will hopefully have some results in a week or two. Here’s hoping that some good information comes out of it and I can finally move forward on some treatments.

One thing that has become very obvious to me is that those that become the most severely ill after a tick bite end up with a considerable number of other things wrong with them due, I guess, to where the bacteria ends up going in your body and what systems had already been strained.

If I was younger, I would seriously consider becoming a researcher or at least someone that is looking at the issue of Lyme and co-infections and how it affects every individual differently. I don’t know how anyone can believe that the same treatment works for everyone! I have yet to see two people with the exact same symptoms if not diagnosed and treated immediately upon a tick bite!

It just doesn’t make sense!