Lyme disease patient living in her car after being discharged from Banff hospital
July 6th, 2016, Colette Derworiz, Calgary Herald
CANMORE — A Canmore woman with Lyme disease has been sleeping in her car since being discharged from a Banff hospital due to what she believes is a political response to the illness.
Sarah Hutchison, 46, said front-line staff at Banff Mineral Springs Hospital treated her well, but believes she’s been mistreated by the health-care system while facing frequent questioning about her illness.
“There was a constant questioning of the legitimacy of having chronic Lyme disease and chemical sensitivities,” said Hutchison, who believes hospitals have systemic problems in treating Lyme disease.
It truly is disgusting that our Canadian Health Care system are not properly acknowledging the existence of Lyme Disease! 6 of our family members have been tested (tests run by iGenix in the U.S.) positive for Lyme Disease. We have opted to be treated with Chinese Medicine which is a long term treatment plan similar to Western Medicine Treatment with long term antibiotics. We opted for Chinese Medicine as long term antibiotics are extremely hard on one’s system and often presents serious issues. As well, no medical doctor, to our knowledge, is willing to treat with long term antibiotics. One Dr. in B.C. had his license revoked because he continued to treat with long term antibiotics after being told by the “authorities” to stop. This Dr. has since been treating patients with Chinese Medicine.
Although CRA will accept Medical Claims for Naturopath consults, but will not allow a claim for Igenex blood tests (approx. $500 Can) nor the prescribed Microbial Defense can be claimed under Medical.
Treatment is very, very expensive whether by antibiotics or Chinese Medicine and we feel at the very least, we should be able to claim a good portion of our treatment. We concede that some supplements prescribed for our treatment can be purchased over the counter and which supplements are of benefit to many people not being treatment for Lymes but we feel that prescribed medicines which are formulated by a compound company for our practitioner and which are not available over the counter should be allowed under a medical claim by CRA.