I’ve always been fairly resilient health-wise. I get sick, and then I get well – usually without any help from pharmaceuticals, without much intervention from so-called science-based medicine or the various alternative curatives.
The field of medicine is a quagmire of conflicting opinion, speculative diagnosis, and hit and miss treatment. As much as I can, I leave my body alone to heal itself.
A bunch of years ago, I went on a solo cycling trip through the Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan. For much of my life I had dreamed of getting into that incredibly beautiful valley and making some distance through it.
Qu’Appelle has an important history and an extraordinary mystique, but it also has the misfortune of being heavily populated with ticks. At that time, about six years ago, and for some years before that, people avoided going there for fear of getting Lyme disease.
On any long distance trek one has to stop to rest, eat, and hydrate. In the early stages of the trip I sat in the ditches, but soon found that the ticks were a bit too plentiful and voracious. They were getting up on me, inside my socks and shoes. They bit into me a few times. I tried not to worry about it.
About two days after that week-long trip ended I got hit with a bug. It was quite a wallop – dizziness, blurry vision, a really nasty stomach, weakness in the legs. It could have been a number of things, including dehydration, sun stroke, and the fact that I drank out of a lake that had an e-coli warning. And it could have been Lyme disease.
Driving back to Ontario from Saskatchewan was quite the logistical and gastrointestinal challenge. Covering 2,700 kilometres by car with diarrhea and massive barfing fits is tough. I chalked the illness up to over-exertion/dehydration, and some kind of bacterial or viral infection. In about a week or so it was gone.
Earlier this month I made a comment on social media about Lyme disease. It was a controversial criticism leveled at some promotional material that was being distributed online about the disease in conjunction with Lyme Awareness Month.
One thing in particular set me off. There was a list of 100 symptoms considered by Lyme advocates as undeniably linked to the bacterial infection. I thought it was irresponsible overkill and I said as much.
Stiff neck, seizures, lesions in the brain, jaw pain, dental problems, blurry vision, buzzing in the ears, sore joints – all symptoms that could apply to any one of a hundred conditions. I suppose if you want the public to think Lyme, this kind of tactic might be effective.
As I write this, I have sore joints, what feels like a mule kick to the left kidney, a stiff neck, stingy eyes, and a couple of sore knuckles on both of my index fingers. Should I be worried?
In criticizing what I considered to be scare-tactic propaganda, I took into account all the many people who are sick – sick with fatiguing, difficult to diagnose ailments - and who believe that Lyme disease might be the cause. And I offered my regrets and respect to them.
Yes, they may all have Lyme disease, and if so they should have access to timely and affective treatment. Or they may have something else, or a combination of many things. The body holds a very complex community of microorganisms, and a strange and elaborate interplay of mental, emotional and physical influences.
Tacked to my Facebook post were links to research, journalism, and opinion from credible sources, that questioned in particular what has come to be called Chronic Lyme disease. Maybe Chronic Lyme disease is a real thing, but it appears there are a great many in medical science who believe it is along the lines of other questionable conditions - adrenal fatigue, multiple chemical sensitivity, Wilson’s temperature syndrome, or food intolerance.
Some believe in Chronic Lyme religiously, while science seems to remain on the fence, or rejects it outright. And yet, in the Lyme community the bacterial infection and the chronic condition are wedded as one. The entire issue is confusing, but evolving, so we will see where it ends up.
Lyme disease has been the subject of controversy at least since the syndrome was first identified in 1975. The issue has faded in and out of focus, but it is back in the news in a big way now, as the range of ticks expands and more cases of the bacterial infection are diagnosed.
There is no doubt that a bite from one of those ticks could make you quite sick. But in my opinion, the onward march of the tick population is no reason to stay out of the woods or off the trails.
There is a thing called the Tenth Man Rule. It may be purely fictional, but it has its roots in the notion of the devil's advocate. When nine people are in agreement on a subject or a course of action it is the responsibility of the 10th person to disagree, no matter how out to lunch their reason for disagreement might be.
It means there will be a dissenting opinion that will force all those in agreement to think again before some very bad or very stupid decision is made.
Right now, it looks like there are nine voices of agreement on Lyme disease. While I may be vilified for doing so, and may alienate myself from some in my own community, I feel compelled to be the tenth man.
