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Keith Poullos war on Lyme Disease ongoing
By Maggie Petrushevsky
West Nile Virus may be the illness health officials are making noises about. Unfortunately it’s not the only one biting insects are inflicting on area residents.
Rural Acton resident Keith Poullos will tell you Lyme’s Disease has just as devastating an affect upon your life and may well be just as fatal as West Nile.
You have to say may because the symptoms are so diverse and the absence of statistical information so vast it’s difficult to know exactly what should be attributed to the illness.
Probably the first misconception is the myth surrounding its transmission. Popular theory has it that Lyme’s is spread by tick bite. It is. But it’s also transmitted by any biting insect including flies, mosquitoes and lice.
Second is the notion that people are most in danger when they’re in wilderness or cottage country. If that were so, why were the largest number of last year’s new cases from Toronto?
Poullos says he doesn’t remember being bitten but he’s been fighting his sickness since he was a child in Ottawa. Doctors have refused to believe him when he complained about his symptoms. In the end, it was a local Acton veterinarian who set him on the right course three years ago when they were talking about how sick he felt. He’s been on antibiotics for a long while and is at least well enough to return to work this year. He figures he will never be fully cured. His brother and his sons are also infected.
Antibiotics are the only treatment for Lyme’s and Poullos says the condition is very curable – if it is caught early. The problem is in catching it at that early stage. If you happen to see the bite – it develops a distinctive appearance like a bull’s eye target – then the doctor may recognize it for what it is. However, many bites are not noticed, Poullos warns. By the time the patient gets to a doctor, damage has spread throughout the entire body.
Nor does the medical community have great acceptance of, or knowledge about, the disease. As a result, many Lyme patients are initially diagnosed with other illnesses from arthritis and early Alzheimers to Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, encephalitis, thyroid, fibromyalgia, lupus, and a host of other, equally serious diseases.
Anyone suspicious that they may be infected is advised to check the Lyme Disease website at www.canlyme.com. It offers a list of symptoms and a wealth of background information as well as opportunities for people to talk to others fighting the same health battle.
The disease was first discovered in the 1970s near Lyme, Connecticut, hence the name. Whether it is a new illness, or just something science was unable to isolate until then, is the subject of debate including some conspiracy theories. For Poullos, the issue is not the history of the illness but rather the battle with the medical community to get it recognized and treatment made readily available. Patients need a referral to get to see a Lyme’s specialist and doctors may refuse to make that referral.
Poullos feels the medical community is unwilling to acknowledge the extent of the problem because it is potentially huge. Doctors have not been trained to recognize Lyme’s and because Canada does so little medical research and accepts next to nothing done in other countries, doctors get no information to help them. Nor do they have the time to do their own research from outside sources.
“They rely on the system just as we rely on them, and the system’s letting them down,” Poullos says.
Poullos has contacted area politicians at both the provincial and federal level and has been trying to work with Halton’s own health unit. The result is an arm’s length stack of letters acknowledging his problem and passing the information to others.
There are only four specialists in Canada who deal with Lyme’s; one in Nova Scotia, one in British Columbia and two in Toronto. Canada reported only 33 new cases nation wide last year and Poullos personally passed on his specialist’s name to 18 people who received affirmative diagnosis.
Does that mean the disease is concentrated in this area, or does it mean because the doctor is here people were able to find treatment and become statistics? Poullos’ skeptical snort tells you his suspicion.
Another problem lies in the fact that Canada’s system for testing blood does not pick up the Lyme bacteria. Only a sophisticated system in a California lab has detected the problem and confirmed the need for the treatment that has brought Poullos relief.
A support group for Lyme’s has been formed in the GTA in recent weeks.
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