West End should be allowed to grow
Gail Harmer's rant this week is incredibly offensive and completely baseless. To claim certain residents of the West End have a purported "deep investment" in this neighbourhood compared with others is absurd. Gail: I am 38, I vote, and I have lived here six years. I am as deeply invested, I care as much, as you. And I support building taller, and also maintaining the character that makes this quiet neighbourhood great.
What I don't do is idly tell others their views and stake is lesser than my own. PS, Gail, this peninsula is not and never was to be a never-changing retirement home. It is, at its best, a vibrant, growing and full of people of all kinds.
- David Ebner
Lyme sufferers speak out
Thank you for bringing awareness to the plight of many of us Canadians suffering from Lyme disease who cannot get proper testing and treatment in our own first world country ("Lyme sufferers struggle for diagnosis, treatment", Oct. 30). I had to go to the U.S. to get properly tested and treated, all expenses paid out of pocket, even though I pay in to the system here and spent 13 years as a RN nursing many ill patients. Yet, when I fell ill I couldn't get diagnosed or treated in the same province where I and served so many.
Thank you for sharing your story Susan. Sadly, it is far too common a problem in BC and the rest of Canada for that matter of fact. It all comes down to educating the medical community and the CDC, IDSA, MSP, College of Physicians, and the list goes on. With most people, had their symptoms been recognized in the beginning, thousands of dollars in tests, hospital visits, specialist visits, and GP visits would have been unnecessary. Now I am left spending thousands of my own "retirement" dollars to get treated. BC, you have failed me and hundreds of others suffering from Lyme disease. It is time to recognize the facts. I consider myself lucky (if that can be a term used by a Lyme sufferer), because I have seen first hand, people who are bedridden and ignored by the system. It's disgraceful that the province that I love, has done this to its residents.
