In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Sarah Keating. As an anatomic pathologist for more than 35 years, Sarah worked on staff at a number of hospitals in Ontario as well as at Ontario Forensic Pathology Services. She is recently retired but is passionate about learning as much as possible about tick borne diseases in order to help improve the access to care for suffering patients. She maintains her affiliation with the University of Toronto as an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology. Sarah has been a member of the CanLyme board since 2022 and she is also an active member of ILADS – the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society.
Sarah is committed to spreading awareness of the potential causative role of tick-borne diseases in mental illness, promoting education of Canadian health care practitioners and policy makers in tick-borne diseases, and promoting the role of tissue diagnosis to increase our understanding of these diseases.
Topics discussed
1:25 How Dr. Keating became interested in becoming a pathologist
2:20 What being a pathologist entails
3:06 What led Dr. Keating to be interested in Lyme disease
4:13 How pathology and Lyme disease intersect, and what a biobank is
5:38 Access to new information to Lyme for medical professionals
6:10 The importance of curiosity in medicine and the troubles of misinformation
7:09 ILADS conference in 2024, and Dr. Keating’s role at the conference for CanLyme
8:55 Support for healthcare practitioners who treat Lyme through CanLyme
10:12 The most helpful takeaways from ILADS conference 2024 and the trouble with Canadian Lyme disease testing
11:12 Differences in international standards for diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease
12:37 The role of climate change in the spread of Lyme disease
13:45 The activities that CanLyme is currently running
14:14 The potential of tick borne diseases in mental illnesses
16:35 What keeps Dr. Keating motivated
17:45 Dr. Keating’s suggestions for those who have been recently diagnosed with Lyme disease
Get a tick removal kit
CanLyme’s Tick Removal Kit has everything you need to properly remove and store a tick for further identification and testing, and is easy to pack and find in your backpack, purse, glove box, first aid kit and in your home.
In this episode, Sarah is joined by Dr. Joseph Jemsek, an infectious disease physician who runs the Jemsek Specialty Clinic in Washington, DC. Dr. Jemsek has been on the leading edge of both the HIV and Lyme disease epidemics.
In this episode, Sarah interviews an Infectious Disease Physician who has treated Lyme patients in the US state where Lyme disease was first identified.
In the words of Optometrist Dr. Cameron McCrodan, “you don’t see with your eyes, you see with your brain.” What is the relationship between the eyes, the brain and some symptoms of Lyme disease? Dr. McCrodan explains that our brains are not only tasked with receiving visual stimuli, they also influence how the information is interpreted and how our eyes function.
In today’s podcast, Sarah is joined by Jim Wilson, founder and President of CanLyme — the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation. After contracting Lyme disease 30 years ago in Nova Scotia, Canada, Jim dedicated his time and energy to improving the lives of Lyme patients and their families, helping to bring a balanced perspective of Lyme disease to the forefront.
In this podcast, Sarah speaks with Steve Smith, an expert in outdoor risk management. Steve has worked for many years teaching, leading, planning, and consulting about ways to manage risk in the outdoors. Steve recently presented at the 2020 NOLS Wilderness Risk Management Conference.
In this episode, Sarah speaks with another champion for Canadians living with Lyme, Green MP Elizabeth May. She describes how she first learned about the severity of Lyme disease when speaking to a woman from Pictou, Nova Scotia who required a wheelchair for mobility. After moving to British Columbia, Elizabeth met others who were experiencing life-altering illness due to the tick-borne diseases.
Funding grants for healthcare practitioners are available now!
