Barrie mom launches battle to help son and others stricken by Lyme disease

Paul Weyer hasn’t kissed his wife since November 2012.

It’s not that Paul doesn’t want to kiss his wife, Tara, it’s simply that he doesn’t want to spread Babesia and the other tick-borne diseases he’s been fighting for the past two years.

Weyer was born and grew up in Barrie with his five siblings in the cozy bungalow on Vancouver Street where his parents, Gerda and Hans Weyer, still live.

This is as much their story as his, because his 78-year-old mother has taken a stand against what may be one of the most untreated diseases.

“Babesia is like brain malaria. I likely have brain damage, but at least I’m talking and can read a full sentence now. I couldn’t do that a year ago. I was dying,” Weyer said from his home in Victoria, B.C.

Weyer was bitten by ticks near his 20-acre wooded property in the West Highlands of Vancouver Island in February 2012.

Within 14 hours, he started getting feverish and ill, but it would take a few months before all the symptoms — memory loss, speech problems, loss of balance, incontinence, vomiting and diarrhea — took over his life.

“At one point, I was sleeping 22 hours a day,” Weyer said on the speaker phone.

Tara chimed in: “When he sat up, he’d fall over. It was like he was boneless.”

Although he studied engineering and was president of his own software developing company, it wasn’t long before they had to sell off the business and property and move to a smaller home in downtown Victoria.

Around this time, a large goiter grew on Tara’s neck, and she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Scheduled to have her thyroid taken out, the Weyers learned Lyme disease is sexually transmitted and Tara had it (but not the Babesia).

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