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Kelowna  

Lyme destroyed her life

A longtime Kelowna resident, volunteer and outdoors enthusiast is battling Lyme disease in Colorado, and her friends want to bring her home alive and well.

Andrea Dykstra suffered a decade of misdiagnosis after a tick bite in 2005, allowing the disease to advance, almost certainly sealing her fate. Late-stage Lyme has an almost 100 per cent fatality rate.

Now, say her friends, Dykstra just wants to get the word out that a simple bug bite can have dramatic consequences.

Dykstra was a vibrant young woman with a life-coaching business, a volunteer, athlete and outdoorswoman whose "energy and enthusiasm for life were contagious. Anyone who met her was immediately taken in by her joie de vivre," said friend Paul Karroll.

A search and rescue volunteer, Dykstra was at a tracking course in Logan Lake on the weekend of her birthday when she was bitten.

On the second day in the field, she felt a pinch on her right forearm. She glanced down to see a black “beetle,” and gave it a flick.

The beetle didn’t fall away. It was embedded in her arm.

What Dykstra didn’t know was the bug was actually a blood-engorged tick. The moment she flicked it, it excreted toxins into her bloodstream.

The tick disengaged itself, and Dykstra thought nothing more of the incident. She didn't develop the telltale bull's eye rash associated with tick bites.

Soon, she would feel exhausted and couldn't sleep. Six months later, she was diagnosed with depression.

Over the next 10 years, her diagnoses would span everything from cancer to osteoarthritis, myelopathy, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis.

Canada has no protocol to deal with Lyme disease, and Dykstra's life soon began to disintegrate.

At her insistence, a Lyme test was ordered. But with an "inconclusive" result and a high number false negatives, she wasn't treated for the disease.

Eventually, she was unable to work and was overwhelmed with panic attacks. Her relationships suffered, and her finances reached a crisis point.

As Canada does not officially recognize Lyme disease, an application for disability support was denied.

"A decade of illness has stripped this beautiful young woman, with her infectious smile and larger than life personality, down to a mere ghost," said Karroll.

At one point, she was suicidal.

She tried alternative Chinese medicine and, on the verge of homelessness, accepted an offer to stay with a family in Colorado.

Meanwhile, friends have created an online fundraiser at http://www.gofundme.com/Andyheals that as of Wednesday has brought in $2,610 for alternative medical treatments.

Dykstra continues to blog when she can at http://www.shortcutstospirituality.com



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