Five years ago, Wendy Aiken was intermittently bedridden, suffered from chronic fatigue, mental instability, insomnia, intense pain and a host of other debilitating issues. Her cognitive functions were compromised, she stuttered, and suffered from extreme anxiety. Doctors were unable to determine what was wrong with her and could only offer her anti anxiety and pain medication.

When she was feeling up to it, Wendy started researching potential causes for her condition and ended up flying to the Fiber Malaysia and Fatigue Centre in Atlanta, Georgia. According to doctors at the centre, there is no such thing as Fiber Malaysia, but an underlying reason for experiencing the conditions that are diagnosed as Fiber Malaysia.

Wendy was subjected to a series of tests, and eventually Dr. Karen Bullington from the Fiber Malaysia and Fatigue Centre in Atlanta was able to positively diagnose her with Chronic Lyme Disease. But that was only the beginning of the story. According to Wendy, most doctors in Canada and the USA say that Chronic Lyme disease doesn’t exist. If a doctor does attempt to treat a patient for the disease, their license is taken away.
To make things even more difficult, sifting through the misinformation about Lyme disease is mind boggling. Wendy set up a website, www.LymeZone.info to help people sort out fact from fiction.

Lyme Disease is difficult to treat because it’s a bit of a shape shifter. Under a microscope it can look like a small slinky, which looks similar to Syphilis, but it can also wrap itself up into a ball or even look like an amoeba. Luckily there is a medication that will treat it if it’s caught early enough.
Doxycycline is commonly used to treat a number of infections, including Lyme Disease, but only in the early phases. If a four to six week dose of Doxycycline is taken within thirty days of the disease being contracted, it can be irradiated.

“The scary part about the disease is it’s not being recognized,” Wendy said. “I’ve been on antibiotics for seventeen months, but I can still give blood. The disease can also be transferred from mother to fetus. At this point, we’re unsure whether it can be transferred sexually or not.”

Lyme Disease is transferred by ticks. A tick is only the size of a poppy seed before it feeds, so it’s very hard to see. They sit in the grass and wait for a human or animal to brush by it and it latches on. It smears an antiseptic type of solution on the skin and then buries it’s head into its victim and feeds.

Removing the tick, without injecting the contents of its stomach into the host, is easy if you have the right tools. A Tick Key is the preferred method of removing the tick as it removes the tick with the head intact and doesn’t squish the body. If the body is squeezed, the tick essentially throws up into the host and the bacteria it carries with it is injected. Tick removal tools can be purchased from local veterinarian.

Approximately ten percent of ticks carry Lyme Disease. It used to be easy enough to steer clear of ticks by staying out of the woods, but ticks have started migrating into urban areas by catching a ride on birds. The once rural tick problem has now become an urban nightmare too.

Wendy is launching a national campaign called SLYMED (Stop LYME Disease). She bought a motor home and is taking it across country to educate people about the effects of the disease and to petition both levels of Government to start taking this disease seriously. For more information, visit Wendy at www.LymeZone.info

Wendy is a Kingston East resident who’s taking action. If you know a Kingston East resident who’s standing up for what they believe in and taking action, let us know at terry@kingstoneastnews.ca