![]() ![]() I think more and more doctors are getting like that, I hope.” They seem to recognize that if they give you antibiotics right away and you take them for a month you’ll be fine. “It’s nine years later and it seems like the Canadian medical system is coming around to a greater degree. “She had 1,500 patients and 1,300 of them were Canadian because nobody in Canada would treat you for Lyme Disease.”īell was prescribed antibiotics and a strict diet. Maureen McShane - who was interested in Lyme Disease and practiced medicine in Plattsburgh, New York. Having to be his own doctor and conducting his own research while suffering from severe symptoms, Bell discovered a physician - Dr. His muscles and joints ache and he struggles with fatigue, those symptoms easing to an extent when spring and summer return.īell said he encountered frustration when seeking diagnosis and treatment of his illness in Canada. He still suffers from the lingering effects of the disease.īell said that in the fall and winter months, the pain gets worse. Lyme disease forced Bell to retire in 2015. I realized ‘this isn’t good.’”Īfter a six month leave, he noticed some improvement in his condition, but not enough to allow him to keep working. I literally could not count the dollar and seventy five cents to buy a newspaper and at the same time I was negotiating with the mines minister of a country in South America for a mining permit. “I was trying really hard to function but you get brain fog. It was all downhill from there.”īell stuck with his job at the helm of INV Metals, but with great difficulty. “About three days later it went away but in October 2013 all the symptoms of Lyme started showing up, like muscle aches and twitches, fatigue, my joints cracking and popping and brain fog. That was either the start of Lyme I picked up on one of those two trips, or Lyme can be dormant in your body for 10 years, so I could’ve picked it up anywhere in the world.” “It was 10 days after those two trips that I woke up with massive chills, shaking violently and a temperature of 103. The typical ‘bull’s eye’ rash associated with Lyme disease didn’t appear on his skin but Bell went through a great deal of suffering. “I had been travelling through southern Africa in late August and early September 2013 and I know I got bit by a number of insects there, and then I was back in Regina, Saskatchewan at a barbecue and I wandered into some tall grass and I may or may not have picked up a tick there,” Bell said. He later became CEO of Toronto-based INV Metals. ![]() Officially based in several Canadian cities throughout his career, Bell travelled the world while working in the mining industry as an exploration geologist, first with Inco - later Vale Limited - for 27 years. ![]() Though initial severe symptoms - such as a distinctive ‘bull’s eye’ rash, fever and headache - go away if the patient is properly diagnosed and treated with antibiotics - permanent joint pain, muscle pain, fatigue and other symptoms often result. “It’s become an addictive passion,” Bell told SooToday.īut that passion and new friends were discovered only after contracting Lyme disease, a serious illness transmitted by tick bites. Marie resident who now lives in Ancaster, Ontario credits that to taking up bird watching - also known as birding - in his retirement, having formed friendships with a group of Hamilton-based naturalists. At 65, Bob Bell says he now has more friends than he has ever had in his life.
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