Jonathan Andrews is fighting for his life against an unknown illness doctors can’t seem to diagnose. Now, he’s hoping to find help from specialists at the Chang Mai Hospital in Thailand — if he can get there.
The 28-year-old life-long Bradford resident has been battling the affliction for more than two years, after he started experiencing symptoms while travelling in Latin America in the summer of 2021.
His nervous system began to shut down, making it difficult to breathe and preventing him from turning his neck or bending over.
By March 2022, he was mostly bedridden.
“I lost my independence. I’m not able to get out of bed or stand or walk. I can only sit for short periods of time, I spend most of the day laying down and my parents take care of me most of the time,” Jonathan said.
That was an abrupt change of pace for the tech worker turned motivational speaker who advocated for men’s mental health at events such as Speaker Slam and Jack Talk, and who wrote a book on the issue titled Man, You Know I Got You.
“More men are depressed, anxious, and struggling than ever before,” Jonathan said in an Oct. 21, 2021 Instagram post. “Instead of asking and expecting of men to man up, get over their pain, and move on, the path to healing is to feel and to connect and to care for each other in brotherhood.”
Due to his condition, Jonathan was limited in how much he could speak. He was assisted during the interview by his sister, Tara Andrews, who explained her brother previously worked for Fiix Software before being laid off at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic; he took that opportunity to travel, but came home "no longer being able to take care of himself, with his body shutting down.”
Shortly after he returned home in early 2022, Jonathan recalls he could barely breathe and hardly move on his own, which prompted his parents to take him to the emergency room. But when the doctors there couldn’t determine the physical cause of the issue, they turned to possible mental-health issues.
“Because they didn’t know what to do, they basically just said ‘Here’s some painkillers, here’s some antidepressants. You’re obviously depressed, and that’s why you can’t move,’" Jonathan said.
As someone who had already surmounted his own struggles with depression years earlier, Jonathan knew there was something more, and he and his family began their journey to discover the source of the sickness.
Jonathan underwent so many tests that he can't remember the number now, but recalls at least four or five rounds of blood work, three or four computed tomography (CT) scans, multiple X-rays, multiple electrocardiogram (ECG) scans and four or five magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans — none of which determined the cause, despite being difficult to access.
“The amount of testing has been very disappointing for my whole family,” Jonathan said, noting that his mother has been the one to advocate on his behalf and navigate the medical system. “If she’s not extremely diligent, in constantly reaching out and following up and asking for new referrals ... then it doesn’t happen.”
The family even applied to have Jonathan receive treatment at inpatient and rehabilitation facilities, but say they were rejected by all eight to which they applied in Ontario.
The Andrews were already familiar with the strains on the medical system, as Tara was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in February of this year.
“My family doctor during the time of my diagnosis did not once reach out to me to see how treatment was going ... because they’re so burnt out and overworked, there’s such a lack of actual human care,” she said.
Fortunately, Tara was able to find a different doctor who could better help, and in September finished the last of 12 rounds of chemotherapy — all while running a full schedule of lessons at her award-winning swim school, Beyond Buoyancy Aquatics.
She had a scan in October that showed there could still be some cancer, and is awaiting another scan in January to determine the next steps.
“We’re just staying positive,” she said.
Jonathan and his parents are staying with Tara and her fiancé, John Clark, at their home in Bradford, which meant Jonathan could use the pool in the evenings with his parents’ help, giving him a chance to float and move around a little, instead of being stuck in bed.
He has also accessed the pool at the BWG Leisure Centre, which features wheelchairs that can roll right into the water.
“The lifeguards at the leisure centre have been really great for my mom and dad — being patient with them, not rushing them, helping with getting equipment ready when he gets there. They have been really great to our family,” Tara said.
Getting from the house to the centre and back presents its own challenges though. Jonathan’s parents need to get him from his bed into a wheelchair, then wheel him out of the house and down a ramp and then manually lift him into the vehicle, before lifting him out again at the centre.
Still, the therapeutic benefit to floating in the water means his parents try to take Jonathan every day.
“We saw a huge benefit to that,” Tara said, and Jonathan described the experience as “very liberating.”
While spending time in the pool helped alleviate some of his symptoms, it still didn’t bring Jonathan any closer to finding the cause of his ailment and even after the family hired a patient advocate, they felt like they weren’t making any real progress in the medical system.
“Eventually we were pretty disillusioned with the whole thing, so I hired a coach that does more holistic approaches,” Jonathan said.
Based on the extent of his immobility and pain, Carl Weston, holistic health coach, recommended testing Jonathan for mould toxicity, heavy metal toxicity, parasites and Lyme disease.
“My mould toxicity test came back with extremely high mould toxicity and my heavy metals test came back with really messed up mineral ratios,” Jonathan said.
At that point, Jonathan had already been home for 18 months and wondered why none of the other doctors had recommended the tests, but when they mentioned it to the family physician and asked if the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) would cover it, they discovered it wouldn’t — the doctor told them he’s never prescribed those tests in his years of practising medicine.
While the results still didn’t reveal the underlying cause of the condition, it has given Jonathan a new lead on possible treatment in Thailand, where the neurologists have said they would like to do further testing based on the “nonspecific lesions” that appeared on one of Jonathan’s scans.
The family also has a community of family and friends in Thailand who can help Jonathan while he’s there, and the warmer climate would allow simpler access to pool therapy year-round.
Jonathan has already dipped further into his savings to rent a house close to the hospital with a pool at a cost of about $8,000 for six months, and booked a flight for nearly $10,000.
However, actually making use of those purchases is an issue all on its own.
Jonathan was supposed to take the flight on Nov. 24, but was notified only a few days in advance the airline’s medical desk had failed to approve him as a non-risk.
“For him to use all of his savings to hopefully go to Thailand and get some results is very admirable,” Tara said, noting that as his sister, watching the situation unfold is “very scary.”
At the time of writing this article, the house in Thailand has already been rented for more than one month. But Jonathan is still left wondering if he’ll ever actually be able to use it.
In the meantime, he’s still relying on his savings. While he has been accepted for the Canada Disability Pension Plan, it won’t cover all the necessary costs.
To help address that issue, Tara started a GoFundMe campaign for Jonathan that has raised more than $25,000 of the $35,000 goal.
“I’m really grateful for all of the commitment and devotion from my parents and family and the encouragement and support from friends and acquaintances and people I haven’t seen in decades that are reaching out and donating to the fundraiser. It’s really kind and generous,” Jonathan said.
For now, the family is trying to stay positive that Jonathan will be able to take the flight and access the specialist half way around the world.
When asked for the top thing he wants to do after recovering, Jonathan joked that he would “probably go on a date with a cute girl,” leading to laughter and Tara remarking that Jonathan hasn’t lost his positive attitude.
“I would probably take my parents somewhere that they wanted to visit and vacation with them so they would have an opportunity to decompress from the whole experience, and we could paint a picture of what the future would look like together,” he added.
For more information, or to contribute to the campaign, visit gofundme.com.
Jonathan’s book can be found at amazon.ca.
