Judge Speaks Out About VERY DISABLING CHRONIC LYME

[Kathleen]

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Subject: Judge Speaks Out About VERY DISABLING CHRONIC LYME

Date: Oct 27, 2011 1:06 PM


Wow.

Thanks for waiting until
the disease's validity is
in the mainstream media
(Chemo for CFIDS).

Thanks for jumping right in
there and taking a lot of risks
on our behalf.

Very... lawyer-like of you.



http://www.actionlyme.org

======================================

http://www.yorkregion.com/feature/article/1233175--i-m-housebound-my-life-has-shrunk-judge

I’m housebound, my life has shrunk: judge
Wants Lyme disease treated like West Nile by health system

Judge coping with lyme disease. Bruce Shilton was a respected
Newmarket courthouse judge. Now he languishes in his Oak Ridges home,
unable to work because of the devastating effects of Lyme disease.

What’s the region, municipalities doing about Lyme disease?
go to www.yorkregion.com/community/article/1230282--tiny-lyme-tick-provokes-huge-controversy
GOOD TO KNOW
A York Region support group is being formed for those concerned about
Lyme disease.
The first meeting is scheduled for Nov. 2, 9:30 to 11 a.m. at Sunset
Grill, 1500 Elgin Mills Rd. E. in Richmond Hill. For more information,
e-mail jvaccar...@rogers.com
For info on Lyme and how to avoid it, visit
http://www.york.ca/Services/Public+Health+and+Safety/lymedisease.htm
or http://www.ontario.ca/lyme or www. canlyme.com
The letters from the doctors all start the same way: It was a pleasure
to meet this man, Bruce Shilton, a strong upstanding member of the
community, criminal lawyer for 24 years, judge on the Ontario Court of
Justice for six. Whatever Mr. Shilton’s health problems are, the
doctors say, they will get to the bottom of it.
And they never do.
Mr. Shilton is no longer working as a criminal lawyer, no longer
sitting on the bench. He is sitting, instead, at his kitchen table in
Oak Ridges, rifling through a stack of letters from medical
specialists, letters that offered him hope but led to dead ends.
Like many who have fallen into this Lyme disease abyss, Mr. Shilton
spends most of his time sorting through medical paperwork, trying to
track down a solution to the medical mystery that derailed his life 10
years ago.
TIRED OF ANONYMITY
And he is tired of doing so in anonymity. Reluctantly, this judge —
who used to command attention in the courtroom — now hopes to command
attention for a controversial disease and its victims who may not have
the same resources and respect he has, who are sometimes viewed as
hypochondriacs or kooks.
Mr. Shilton is neither. He did not know much about Lyme disease back
in 1998 when he first started to get sick, but he did know a lot about
the law.
A certified specialist in criminal law, he had written books, was
active in legal education, sat on the Federation of Law Societies of
Canada travelling panel and was appointed to the Ontario Court of
Justice, posted to the Newmarket courthouse.
When he wasn’t working he was busy playing oldtimers hockey, coaching,
walking the golf course two or three times a week and raising three
children. He almost never got sick.
That suddenly changed.
“I remember cutting grass at the cottage and I almost collapsed. It
was really strange.”
He was beset with an “unplugged feeling,” unable to focus or eat, like
the worst flu ever. He figured he’d picked up some kind of bug while
working at the Don Jail. But it didn’t go away.
Over the years, a host of other symptoms emerged: migraines, fatigue,
painful joints, recurring sinus infections, lower back pain, abdominal
discomfort and visual problems.
COULD NO LONGER WORK
He’d moved from his home near Hwy. 7 to north Richmond Hill to be near
the Newmarket courts, but gradually found he could no longer make it
to work. In 2004, he took a month off and never went back.
He became a “house hermit,” he says, bouncing from one specialist to
the other, about 25 in all, undergoing hundreds of tests including the
ELISA test for Lyme disease, but they all came back negative.
Mr. Shilton knew that Lyme disease is an illness that spreads through
the bite of an infected tick, is associated with a bull’s eye rash and
is best treated quickly with antibiotics.
What he found out too late is that not everyone notices a tick bite;
or has the trademark rash; that the ELISA, Canada’s primary test for
the infection, is notoriously unreliable; and a short round with
antibiotics, if you are lucky enough to get it, does not always work.
In 2007, one of the doctors went out on a limb and sent Mr. Shilton’s
blood to California for a different kind of Lyme test, the Western
Blot, one that is believed to be more accurate but not the first line
of testing in Canada.
“I remember asking him, ‘is it good news or bad news?’ and he told me
it was both. Good news because we know what it is, bad because it’s
not easy to treat.”
Not much has changed since the day he learned he has Lyme and he
thinks that’s because it was not discovered early enough.
At 54, his life has come to a grinding halt.
“I have basically led the cloistered life of a chronically fatigued
person. My symptoms are numerous and I have for all intents and
purposes become housebound.”
The thing that drives him nuts is the certainty that all this could
have been prevented — for him and thousands like him — if the health
system would just get off the fence and start taking the disease more
seriously, as seriously as it does, say, West Nile that gets a big
media blitz every summer.
He is calling for a task force or independent review of testing and
treatment protocols and ultimately, a tick-borne disease clinic.
‘WE ARE LYME LEPERS’
“We are the lyme lepers of this generation,” he says. “They ignore our
requests for treatment thinking we are a bunch of whining
hypochrondriacs ... Patients are left with nothing except chronic
illness and ultimately a slow death when the disease finally shuts
down an organ or two.”
He considers what happened to Gabe Magnotta, Vaughan’s Magnotta Winery
owner who lost his life after battling the disease more than a year
ago. He wonders “what will it take to get those in control of the
health system to sit up and take notice? ...How is it that no
politician is willing to step into the fire?”
It’s why he’s decided to speak out. After such a busy life, there
isn’t much else to do.
“It’s pretty sad,” he says. “Boredom is brutal, when you go from my
old life to this ...
“Judges are treated pretty well. You walk into the courthouse, you’re
treated well. You get used to that. And then all of a sudden nobody
knows who you are anymore. You’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do.
Your circle of life shrinks.”
His kitchen cupboard is filled with bottles of supplements and potions
he hopes will get him back on his feet again. There’s something called
a rife machine, an experimental frequency device. He is being treated
by a specialist in New York, a Dr. Maureen McShane who contracted the
disease herself in Quebec and now treats Lyme patients in a way that
no Canadian doctor does, or dares to.
He thinks it is helping and he feels fortunate he can afford the
treatment when so many others, unidentified and untreated, struggle in
silence.
He admits it is unusual. Judges do not usually comment on government
issues, especially in a critical way, but he believes it’s his duty to
speak for those who can’t.
“Maybe they’ll think ‘oh, maybe these people are not so crazy after
all’.”


KMDickson