After I received my diagnoses in another province, I returned home hoping to find a family doctor who would be willing to treat me locally. I met with many doctors and was told the same thing by all of them. It was almost impossible to get Lyme Disease in Canada!
They told me there was no way I could have Lyme considering I hadn't been to the US and I was not a back woods camper in Northern Ontario. I couldn't believe it! They completely dismissed the fact that I already had a clinical diagnoses from Lyme literate doctor.
“How about we just treat your symptoms individually,” said one doctor after I handed her my 3 page list. I was shocked. I decided to go looking for statistics on Lyme in Canada myself to see what they were basing their decisions on.
“Lyme disease is not a nationally reportable disease in Canada” says the Public Health Agency of Canada on their Lyme Disease fact sheet. This maybe be the reason it has been so hard to find any statistics on incidences in Canada.
The chart below was used at the Vancouver Wall of Hope (you can see it in the news clip in the back ground). It shows that Canada still has a long way to go in recognizing the existence of Lyme.
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