Grandfather finishes two-year run for Lyme Disease Awareness

Lyme Disease is a very serious disease that doctors in Canada are still learning about, so it often still gets missed or misdiagnosed.

This was the case for the family of a 74-year-old grandfather who decided to run to raise awareness of the tick bite-born illness.

David Woodhall struggles watching his daughter Wendy suffer from Lyme Disease, as well as his grandchildren James and Elise who they believe contracted it from her breast milk as infants.

He even had to take care of James as a newborn while Wendy was very sick with what would later be discovered to be Lyme Disease.

“So suddenly I had this fairly newborn baby, a few months old, and he was mine,” says Woodhall. “And he was so good, and I loved it so much, and he went everywhere with me. He went in the running buggy when I went out with my running buddies and he was our little baby mascot.”

Woodhall has been running for over 30 years, sometimes even competitively.

Two years ago however, James took a turn for the worse, and that’s when Woodhall knew he had to act.

“It was Christmas Day and I hadn’t seen James in a while and he walked in and he’d lost so much weight, he was pale, he was in pain and it was Christmas Day. We were supposed to be a family celebrating with joy. He had to go home and go to bed and I think that was the first time it hit the family that this was very serious.”

He says he couldn’t handle just sitting around and worrying about James so he started running, tracking his kilometers, and the idea slowly started to grow.

He drew inspiration from Terry Fox’s run across Canada for cancer, and says it was a great joy running the North Waterloo YMCA track five mornings a week, and talking with those he met along the way.

He never faltered in his early 7:30 a.m starts, although he admits it was sometimes a challenge shifting from running for speed to running for distance.

When asked what he would do now that the 7,389 kilometre run was over, Woodhall says he sustained an injury part way through that forced him to ride a bike for a few days, and for his own satisfaction, he is going to make up the distance.

Aside from raising awareness for Lyme Disease, Woodhall says some people chose to donate to the Canadian Lyme Association, and others donated to medical funds for his family.

Wendy Woodhall adds that raising awareness is the most important part of this journey.

Many blood tests are not completely accurate and can give false negatives, and doctors are only allowed to treat patients for two months, which isn’t nearly enough if the disease has become chronic.

“So patients have to get testing, diagnosis and treatment in the U.S. and pay out of pocket,” says Wendy. “We use old protocols that have since been unproven through multiple evidence-based research studies globally but Canada continues to use them.”

Main symptoms of chronic Lyme Disease include fatigue and joint pain and can lead to many other health problems.

Both Wendy and David urge everyone to use extra caution, do their research and check yourself for ticks whenever you’re put at risk.

“It’s becoming more prevalent all the time in Canada, as the deer ticks seem to be migrating north, possibly due to climate change,” says Woodhall.