July 9th - Back to Queen's Park

The final day!

 

In 32 days on the road, I cycled 30 days.  In those 30 days, I cycled a total of 1,828.8 kilometers for an average of 61 kilometers per day.  Along the way I met a lot of people who knew a lot about Lyme.  Along the way, I spoke in several school to students who unfortunately knew very little about a disease that if misdiagnosed for as few as 4 months, can cause the debilitating, and in Canada, the medically untreatable disease known as Chronic Lyme Disease.

 

The greatest moments of Cycle For Lyme are too numerous to list.  From a simple wave and blow of the horn along the road to an emergency doctor in Deep River who made a huge impact by professionally determining what went wrong inside my left knee, the kindness was and is much appreciated.  To all that provided donations, I thank you for reducing the financial load that undertaking Cycle For Lyme has created.

 

As someone who hasn't been able to work fulltime for over a decade and who was bedridden for weeks at a time only 2 short years ago,  I continue to find myself surprised by how far I have come and what I have accomplished.  In simple words, the thought that I was told that I needed open heart surgery and that I may only have a few months to live because of a faulty heart valve is just icing on the cake of how out of touch the Canadian healthcare system is with respect to Lyme Disease. 

 

Where Cycle For Lyme goes from here is yet to be determined.  All Lyme disease groups from east to west need to start working together, rather than on their own, in order to have a solid, collective voice to make the Canadian healthcare system finally accept that there are thousands of Canadians infected by Borrleia burgdorferi. 

 

What Cycle For Lyme has proven is that in every part of the province of Ontario, there are real people suffering with real symptoms of a disease that few doctors in the province know anything about.  It continues to boggle my mind to think that Canadians have to travel to the United States and pay for treatment to try and combat a disease that has been within a couple of hours of the Canadian border for 35 years.  We are not a third world country, yet with Lyme disease, we may as well be.

 

To all that have supported me, Heather, Gavin, my family, and all others in the many ways to make Cycle For Lyme a success, I thank you.

 

I will stop here......I have to go for a ride on my bicycle......just because I can.