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.
Sarah is excited to announce a new Educator Resource for Lyme disease, and speak with the lead resource developer, Lauren Hudson. Lauren is an educator and parent with a passion for science, life and for going into nature with her students and her family. She took a deep dive into the world of Lyme disease to help develop an educator resource to help other teachers both learn and teach about ticks and tick-borne illnesses.
She points to the different roles practitioners have in a patient’s care, including primary care physicians and specialists such as neurologists and cardiologists. Finally she reiterates the importance of prevention and of adequate early treatment, to prevent the chronic symptoms of Lyme disease.
In today’s podcast, Sarah talks about ticks, Lyme disease and climate change with investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer. She lives in New York State, an area of the US which is highly endemic for Lyme disease, and has been investigating this disease for the past eight years.
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.
What can employers do to protect staff who work in the outdoors? In today’s podcast, Sarah explores some answers to that question with Tim Tchida, Owner and CEO of Summit Reforestation in Smithers BC. When Tim first heard about Lyme disease, he never imagined getting the disease himself. Tim recalls first learning he had Lyme disease after receiving a positive Canadian Lyme test (western blot) following mild symptoms of the disease.
Funding grants for healthcare practitioners are available now!
