Michelle LaCharite wants everyone to know that Lyme disease is no joke.
“My day-to-day life is really unpredictable. If I’m going to do something simple like wash my hair, that’s my activity for the day. I’m so exhausted that I can’t do anything else,” said the Huron County resident.
LaCharite contracted Lyme disease in 2011 during a hike along the Bruce Trail, but she wasn’t diagnosed until 2015. She’s suffered from deep fatigue chronic and intense pain with bouts of facial paralysis and hair loss ever since.
“When I got Lyme disease it took so long to diagnose it that it was already chronic. And then anything else that’s out there that you can catch I think I caught it,” said the Grand Bend area grandmother.
Compromised by Lyme disease, LaCharite caught COVID-19 in 2020 – she suffered two pulmonary embolisms and deals with long COVID-19 symptoms now. In 2024 she was diagnosed with Forester’s Disease, which means her body overproduces calcium causing painful bone spurs that pass into her nervous system and organs.
“I think Lyme disease, well, I know it weakens your immune system. And when that happens it opens the door for other things,” she said.
1,865 Ontarians were diagnosed with Lyme Disease in 2023, and 84 ended up in hospital. That’s a far cry from the 451 Ontarians diagnosed in 2015.
LaCharite said there’s much more publicity and education surrounding the tick-borne disease than when she was diagnosed, but testing and treatment still have a long way to go.
“It’s really hard to find a Lyme literate medical doctor, and once you find one you then need treatment, and there’s all kinds of controversy around testing. Canada tests for about 3 to 6 of the strains and there’s over 50 different strains of this bacteria,” she said.
LaCharite recently spoke to the Probus Club of Grand Bend about her Lyme disease journey and how it’s dramatically changed her life. She said she wants people to protect themselves by wearing long sleeved and light-coloured clothing when they’re hiking or outdoors, do daily tick checks, and try to remove the ticks as soon as possible after being bit so they don’ t end up like her. She’s also advocating for progress in Lyme disease detection and diagnosis within Canada’s medical system.
“There are thousands and thousands of people I believe in Canada who have chronic Lyme disease but don’t know they have it because they haven’t had a proper diagnosis and that means that they suffer or maybe have been misdiagnosed. If I can prevent even one person from getting this disease by sharing my story, I’ll have done what I set out to accomplish,” she said.
You can learn about Lyme disease in Ontario by visiting the province’s website.
