...	Black-legged ticks can transmit Lyme disease to humans and animals.

By EVA HOARE / Investigative Reporter

A British Columbia doctor says he's treated "double-digit" numbers of Nova Scotians for Lyme disease, perhaps because few doctors understand the illness.

Ernie Murakami, clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, says he has also been at the receiving end of attacks by other doctors for his attempts to publicize information about Lyme disease.

"I have been discredited but I'm not worried about it that much because I want to educate people that much," Dr. Murakami said in a recent interview from his family practice in Hope, B.C.

The doctor, also the medical director of the Fraser health authority and head of emergency at Fraser Canyon Hospital, counts Kelly Burke of Shad Bay and Shaun Burke of New Waterford (no relation to Kelly) among his growing list of Lyme patients.

Dr. Murakami says he's not interested in driving a wedge in the medical profession between those who believe Lyme disease is spreading and those who don't.

"I don't want to alienate them in any way," the doctor said.

"I just know I see people from all over and they're just desperate for help. All the doctors should be aware that we are missing the diagnoses."

He said many Canadians are being diagnosed or tested for a host of other diseases, from MS to obscure syndromes, because the current blood testing for Lyme here misses a vast majority of the cases.

Before his Lyme diagnosis, Shaun Burke, 38, was told by doctors that he had Meneir's disease, (a deterioration of the inner ear), heavy metal toxicity, fibromyalgia, ulnar neuropathy and chronic fatigue syndrome. Marfan's syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes joint problems and heart palpitations, was also tracked as a possibility.

He saw Dr. Murakami in November 2004, four years after his symptoms first appeared.

"Some of the things I can't even remember. It was just getting out of hand," he said in a recent interview.

Mr. Burke also had a distinctive rash, one indicator of Lyme. It appeared on his shoulder and he says although he urged his doctor to consider Lyme disease, the physician wouldn't. (He doesn't remember being bitten by a tick.)

"The neurologist told me the only thing that was wrong with me is I needed a good psychiatrist. There's so much that goes wrong in your body, they figure you're just crazy."

Dr. Murakami said using clinical diagnoses combined with better blood testing would ensure Lyme disease isn't over- or under-diagnosed.

He said lab tests are not the sole indicator.

"As far as I'm concerned . . . if you do it by lab (tests only), you're going to miss 90 per cent of the cases."

Physicians should be on the lookout for healthy, possibly outdoorsy people who have had no previous history of illness that all of a sudden "develop multi-organ failure," he said. "When you have all these systems falling down at the same time, you've got to consider Lyme disease."

In 2004, Mr. Burke said he was so sick he thought he was going to die, so he got his affairs in order. Today, after antibiotic treatment for about eight months, he said he feels about "75 per cent" on the way toward good health.

"Put it this way, I was dead this time last year," Mr. Burke said.

Before he got sick, he worked with special-needs children in Cape Breton but is now unemployed.

Dr. Murakami said treating Lyme, which has become a bit more expensive because it can take more than a standard 30-day treatment of antibiotics, is still cheaper than bouncing patients from specialist to specialist and treatment to treatment.

"Most of these people have seen an average of 10 doctors before I've seen them."

He said he's trying to get the word out to students in medical school, noting that many physicians still don't have a great knowledge of Lyme disease.

Dr. Paul Sockett, with the Public Health Agency of Canada, said in a recent interview that more physicians must be educated about Lyme.

"It's important for physicians who may be seeing a patient for the first time to perhaps to be aware that Lyme disease is an issue," said Dr. Sockett.

Dr. Murakami said it is difficult for doctors because not every Lyme patient exhibits the bull's-eye rash, which is one hallmark of the disease, so its symptoms can be mistaken for other ailments.

"You may not even develop a rash . . . only about 35 per cent of the people develop a rash."

Mr. Burke says the medical establishment has to stop deriding doctors who are more open to Lyme diagnoses.

"This guy (Murakami) actually gave me my life back and never took a cent from me."