Day 11

Morning - Stress with a capital S. This is the first morning that I woke feeling sick. I didn't sleep good at all and haven't had such aching legs, back, shoulder, and stomach. However, despite it all, considering the forecast for extreme May heat today, I was spinning toward Owen Sound before 7 am.

The only genuine peace I had this morning was when I re-routed my trip and took a couple of back roads that I knew from a family trip to South Hampton last August. I remembered Bruce Road 3, Concession 8 W, and the B Line up to Hwy 21 like it was yesterday. In 10k you travel through an area that you could stop and spend a lifetime. I had two dogs, one a big lab, the other a tiny little thing, chase me along the tiny stretch of Concession 8 W. The lab was a issue, I had to crank as hard as I could, but the little dog, that was fun. Along the B Line you see beautiful countryside with new homes as well as completely dilapidated structures now being used to keep cattle happy and out of the weather. As you get close to hwy 21, you pass two rows of concrete foundations from a dozen structures long since gone...a part of the changing world we live in.

As the sun fried my exposed skin and the sweat poured from me, the spin along 21 to Owen Sound yielded my Specialized's first breakdown. Without any apparent incident, my rear wheel began to wobble. After stopping and truing the rim straight again, I had to deal with some sort of chain alignment issue that I really don't know how was started nor how I corrected. What I do know is that after fighting the heat and the breakdown, the air was blue with some colourful language that simply has not been used until this day 11.

By the time we arrived in Owen Sound at 10 am, I had clicked another 50.6 km to my ride. A few hours r & r, and I plan to put the balance on the odometer.

Afternoon - Given that Lyme disease has become such a political debate between those who have the disease and those who for whatever reason deem it important to deny healthcare to those infected, it never ceases to amaze me how some people believe that suppressing the facts that Lyme is here in Canada is an appropriate way to deal with those who want to help with public awareness. What I have now and what I will never lose is the knowledge that someday what I am saying today will be fully accepted and those who choose to turn a blind eye today will eat crow in the future. To the naysayers - rather than accept the blind rhetoric of a healthcare system hiding from a world of evidence, simply open your eyes, seek the facts, and allow the facts to decide the outcome. We are not liars, we are not attention seekers, we are not embellishing what we are going through. Like the very doctor that misdiagnosed me for 17 years said in November of 2010 - ten years ago we didn't know what causes an ulcer, now we know it is a bacterial infection.

When a person is charged with a crime, our justice system deems the person to be innocent until proven guilty. However, if you claim to have dozens of symptoms that are readily accepted in dozens of countries around the world as being the clinical diagnosis for Lyme disease, in Canada, you are simply labeled as being crazy and quite literally end up being refused proper medical attention.

I thought I had the same rights as the next person, but over and over when it came to healthcare, my rights were regularly deemed secondary to others. Why do people with Lyme not have the same rights as the rest?