Help Monica fight Lyme Desease
Donation protected
UPDATE:
November 2019
Unfortunately It has been a very difficult year for Monica and the treatments we have tried so far have been unsuccessful. Initially we had hoped that antibiotics would work after hearing that if you caught the disease early enough, they tend to be effective. This is what motivated the trip to British Columbia to see Dr. Chan, who could prescribe those meds. Unfortunately Monica did not respond and in fact she reacted quite badly to them.
Since then we have learned so much more about Lyme and its treatment options and have seen plenty of doctors both traditional & naturopathic. The key thing we learned is that what works for one person does not necessarily work for another and that treatment gets modified part way through as the body reacts to whats being done to it. The bad news is that none of these treatments are covered by provincial or private health plans. Every treatment, every doctors appointment, every supplement etc etc needs to be paid for.
Luckily we have been referred to a local Doctor who has been using Ozone treatments to treat Lyme patients. Ozone treatment is not well known in North America but has been used for years in Europe and South America. If you are interested you can google how it works but basically the blood is treated with Ozone which kills off the Lyme. Similar to chemotherapy this makes the patient quite ill and it is this reaction that is monitored by the doctor to help determine the effectiveness of the treatment. This "killed off" Lyme now has to be removed by the body and there are various detox methods employed to help with that as well as methods to help the body fight back and gather strength such as intravenous Vitamin C therapy.
All of this is monitored by the doctor and modified as we go along with different treatments, supplements etc added or removed depending on how she is coping.
We are continuing with the weekly Ozone treatments, as well as various other treatments, but haven't seen any marked improvement as yet. We were interrupted a couple of weeks ago when Monica had to be hospitalized for 4 days due to a ruptured Ovarian Cyst. Part of the struggle is that we do not know if this is Lyme related or not. Having Lyme makes you question everything because Lyme augments the severity of any injury or issue in the body.
It is anticipated that the current treatment will take around 6 months before we know for sure whether it has been successful or not. There will be indicators along the way and she should begin feeling better more & more as time goes on but the term "successful" is subjective because some people seem to be lucky enough to get rid of Lyme completely while others will continue to need treatments to help them cope with the disease.
The costs of treatment are adding up exponentially and are now in the Thousands of dollars per month. Thank you so much for all your help!!!!
Back at the beginning of October 2018 our Daughter Monica became sick with Flu like symptoms. Like most parents we took her to the doctor and was told that it was a virus. Shortly after that her knee started to hurt and within a few hours it hurt so much she couldn’t bend it, walk or even touch the knee/leg. We took her to St. Catharines emerg and the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong after running all their standard tests. They seemed to be a bit bewildered by the fact that although she was obviously in considerable pain there had been no trauma to the knee nor was there redness, swelling or heat which is normally associated with pain. We were told that most likely the virus had gone into the knee and they sent us home. What was also strange was that pain meds had no effect at all.
This didn’t sit well with me so that night I did some research and pretty much right away came across Lyme disease. Even though the symptoms of Lyme are very similar to that of other diseases/conditions such as mono, MS, Lupus etc I had a feeling that that was what Monica had. The next morning I mentioned it to my business partner Dave and the first thing he said was Lyme. His ex wife Sharon has Lyme and has been battling it for years. So I called Sharon looking for help on what to do next.
To make a long story short we ended up seeing a fantastic Naturopath in Burlington, Dr. Carissa Doherty at Natural Care Clinic. It took us a bit of time to find a Naturopath who would see Monica because she was only 14. Dr. Doherty explained how Lyme worked. How the Canadian medical system views Lyme and the role that Naturopaths play in Ontario. We also had Monica tested for Lyme in Canada. This test came back negative which, after all that we had read about Lyme, wasn’t a surprise. This test is known for false negatives. We also had her tested by Igenix in California. This test came back positive but only just, because it was still fairly new in her system. The test measures the body’s immune system fighting the infection so it had only just started. This was six weeks after showing symptoms which is the minimum amount of time to have the test performed.
As we understand it, In Ontario, traditional medical doctors will only treat a patient with Lyme who has a positive Canadian Lyme test. Since Monica had a negative test we needed to go the Naturopathic route. We could have had her retested in Canada, hoping for a positive result enabling her to get treated, but after all the reading her Mother and I did we had no confidence that the traditional medical community could effectively treat her. This is a very hotly debated topic. If interested you can go see David Suzuki discuss it on “The Nature of Things – Ticked off: The mystery of Lyme disease.” It is an older episode but it is still very relevant.
In Ontario Naturopaths are not allowed to prescribe medications which makes it difficult to treat an infection such as Lyme Disease. Dr. Doherty explained to us that we therefore had 2 options. Pursue Treatment in the United States or in British Columbia. We decided on BC hoping that it might be a little cheaper even though it was farther away than the doctor who Dr. Doherty would recommend in Western NY.
In BC she recommended Dr. Chan at Pangaea Clinic in Richmond so that is where we went. Dr Chan was excellent and after many more tests has come up with a treatment plan for Monica. It took 5 months to get to this point. The first round of drugs that Monica took made her so sick that we were forced to stop. Dr. Chan sent us an alternative that seems to be working much better. We are not 100% sure at this point but Dr. Chan thinks that we should have her Lyme free in 3 to 6 months. It takes a long time to get rid of Lyme. Many people who are chronic sufferers may never get rid of it.
The good news is that Monica is getting the treatment that she requires. The bad news is that this is not cheap. We were told to expect it to cost around $15,000 by the time we are done which, of course, is why we are here. So many people have asked how they could help and whether we were going to do a go fund me page, so we did.
Thank you to all of you who have decided to help our darling Monica. We can’t wait to have our active fun loving daughter back!!
November 2019
Unfortunately It has been a very difficult year for Monica and the treatments we have tried so far have been unsuccessful. Initially we had hoped that antibiotics would work after hearing that if you caught the disease early enough, they tend to be effective. This is what motivated the trip to British Columbia to see Dr. Chan, who could prescribe those meds. Unfortunately Monica did not respond and in fact she reacted quite badly to them.
Since then we have learned so much more about Lyme and its treatment options and have seen plenty of doctors both traditional & naturopathic. The key thing we learned is that what works for one person does not necessarily work for another and that treatment gets modified part way through as the body reacts to whats being done to it. The bad news is that none of these treatments are covered by provincial or private health plans. Every treatment, every doctors appointment, every supplement etc etc needs to be paid for.
Luckily we have been referred to a local Doctor who has been using Ozone treatments to treat Lyme patients. Ozone treatment is not well known in North America but has been used for years in Europe and South America. If you are interested you can google how it works but basically the blood is treated with Ozone which kills off the Lyme. Similar to chemotherapy this makes the patient quite ill and it is this reaction that is monitored by the doctor to help determine the effectiveness of the treatment. This "killed off" Lyme now has to be removed by the body and there are various detox methods employed to help with that as well as methods to help the body fight back and gather strength such as intravenous Vitamin C therapy.
All of this is monitored by the doctor and modified as we go along with different treatments, supplements etc added or removed depending on how she is coping.
We are continuing with the weekly Ozone treatments, as well as various other treatments, but haven't seen any marked improvement as yet. We were interrupted a couple of weeks ago when Monica had to be hospitalized for 4 days due to a ruptured Ovarian Cyst. Part of the struggle is that we do not know if this is Lyme related or not. Having Lyme makes you question everything because Lyme augments the severity of any injury or issue in the body.
It is anticipated that the current treatment will take around 6 months before we know for sure whether it has been successful or not. There will be indicators along the way and she should begin feeling better more & more as time goes on but the term "successful" is subjective because some people seem to be lucky enough to get rid of Lyme completely while others will continue to need treatments to help them cope with the disease.
The costs of treatment are adding up exponentially and are now in the Thousands of dollars per month. Thank you so much for all your help!!!!
Back at the beginning of October 2018 our Daughter Monica became sick with Flu like symptoms. Like most parents we took her to the doctor and was told that it was a virus. Shortly after that her knee started to hurt and within a few hours it hurt so much she couldn’t bend it, walk or even touch the knee/leg. We took her to St. Catharines emerg and the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong after running all their standard tests. They seemed to be a bit bewildered by the fact that although she was obviously in considerable pain there had been no trauma to the knee nor was there redness, swelling or heat which is normally associated with pain. We were told that most likely the virus had gone into the knee and they sent us home. What was also strange was that pain meds had no effect at all.
This didn’t sit well with me so that night I did some research and pretty much right away came across Lyme disease. Even though the symptoms of Lyme are very similar to that of other diseases/conditions such as mono, MS, Lupus etc I had a feeling that that was what Monica had. The next morning I mentioned it to my business partner Dave and the first thing he said was Lyme. His ex wife Sharon has Lyme and has been battling it for years. So I called Sharon looking for help on what to do next.
To make a long story short we ended up seeing a fantastic Naturopath in Burlington, Dr. Carissa Doherty at Natural Care Clinic. It took us a bit of time to find a Naturopath who would see Monica because she was only 14. Dr. Doherty explained how Lyme worked. How the Canadian medical system views Lyme and the role that Naturopaths play in Ontario. We also had Monica tested for Lyme in Canada. This test came back negative which, after all that we had read about Lyme, wasn’t a surprise. This test is known for false negatives. We also had her tested by Igenix in California. This test came back positive but only just, because it was still fairly new in her system. The test measures the body’s immune system fighting the infection so it had only just started. This was six weeks after showing symptoms which is the minimum amount of time to have the test performed.
As we understand it, In Ontario, traditional medical doctors will only treat a patient with Lyme who has a positive Canadian Lyme test. Since Monica had a negative test we needed to go the Naturopathic route. We could have had her retested in Canada, hoping for a positive result enabling her to get treated, but after all the reading her Mother and I did we had no confidence that the traditional medical community could effectively treat her. This is a very hotly debated topic. If interested you can go see David Suzuki discuss it on “The Nature of Things – Ticked off: The mystery of Lyme disease.” It is an older episode but it is still very relevant.
In Ontario Naturopaths are not allowed to prescribe medications which makes it difficult to treat an infection such as Lyme Disease. Dr. Doherty explained to us that we therefore had 2 options. Pursue Treatment in the United States or in British Columbia. We decided on BC hoping that it might be a little cheaper even though it was farther away than the doctor who Dr. Doherty would recommend in Western NY.
In BC she recommended Dr. Chan at Pangaea Clinic in Richmond so that is where we went. Dr Chan was excellent and after many more tests has come up with a treatment plan for Monica. It took 5 months to get to this point. The first round of drugs that Monica took made her so sick that we were forced to stop. Dr. Chan sent us an alternative that seems to be working much better. We are not 100% sure at this point but Dr. Chan thinks that we should have her Lyme free in 3 to 6 months. It takes a long time to get rid of Lyme. Many people who are chronic sufferers may never get rid of it.
The good news is that Monica is getting the treatment that she requires. The bad news is that this is not cheap. We were told to expect it to cost around $15,000 by the time we are done which, of course, is why we are here. So many people have asked how they could help and whether we were going to do a go fund me page, so we did.
Thank you to all of you who have decided to help our darling Monica. We can’t wait to have our active fun loving daughter back!!
Organizer
Glenn Berglund
Organizer
St. Catharines, ON
