The
last few years of my life
have taught me that in order to understand how a person has come to
be the way they are, you need to understand where life has
taken them to until now. From Lyme to MS to any form of
misunderstood or misdiagnosed environmental diseases, a lot of
people suffer personal debilitating diseases that as Canadians, we
believe those people have access to good quality healthcare.
I
received my first dose of what I thought was a typical flu virus at
25 years of age while on vacation at Britt, Ontario, in August of
1989. From that initial 3-day illness I simply never recovered. Although I would not say that the symptoms I
first contracted were extreme, what I would say is that
as the frequency increased, so did the intensity. Within 6 to
8 months, flu-like symptoms, high fever, and constant sore-throats
became a regular part of life. I would get sick two or three times a
month, summer or winter. My body was always fighting infection.
My original
family doctor retired a few years
prior to 1989, so by the winter of 1990, I ended up at a walk-in clinic in
Toronto, Canada, near where I was living. Time after time,
round of antibiotic after antibiotic, I was always told it was just
a bad flu virus or throat infection. After numerous rounds of
antibiotics, not
only was I no better off, but I continued to get worse and
unfortunately ended up
accepting that this had become my way of life.
By the mid-90's I was constantly
fighting a "bad bug" and was experiencing the same flu-like symptoms,
as well as having throat infection after throat infection along with
migrating muscle pain. Since I had been raised on a farm as well as had
been in
the construction industry for over a decade, I had always been in better than average physical
condition. By the mid-90's, I had resigned myself to believe that construction had
taken its toll on my body in the form of this constant illness.
Given that my doctor continually told me that it was just another
"bad bug" I incorrectly began to blame myself for not taking proper care of my body.
By the
late 90's, I was suffering from
chronic neck pain as well as various muscle and body pains. I would
regularly get a
nasty red rash on my tongue and began suffering from
chest pain, regular migraines, confusion, and relentless non-stop
fatigue. It didn't matter if I slept 20 hours a day for 4 days straight, I
was always exhausted and in constant pain. By 2002, I was still being
prescribed round after round of antibiotic. The more
antibiotics I took,
the worse I felt a few days later. It was like something inside me went
wild shortly after every round of antibiotics was finished. I could
literally feel the pain travel through my body, going from my stomach to my
chest, to my throat, to my sinuses,
over, and over, and over again. When I described this feeling to my
doctor, not only did he not listen, he mockingly laughed at me and
told me that was absurd, reinforcing his position that I had mental
problems. By 2004, I was sick all
the time and the best I had were a few days a month where I merely
felt lousy and didn't suffer
massive amounts of muscle pain and constant fatigue throughout my body.
Without any doubt, the worst
situation I have even found myself in was the result of my doctors
misguided diagnosis of what was wrong with me. Given that I
felt so isolated from help from my doctor, I became even more
withdrawn from life and constantly tried to hide what I was
living. Not until
2006, against my doctors orders, did I finally realize that not only
was my doctor ignorant, he had been grossly incompetent concerning
my health. Against his orders, I took myself off the
prescribed garbage that made me worse and empowered myself to
find out what was really wrong. As of August 2006, I was on my
own to try and uncover what was so terribly wrong inside me.
Too
be continued...........
James
Christie, Newmarket, Ontario, Canada.