They say the best stories come from people writing what they know and so I will share with you, my friends, I now know ticks.
For years I have made fun of all the ticks we have bombard us here every summer by keeping them in a clear jar of alcohol so we can get a body count at the end of the season. Some years are worse than others. If memory serves me correct 2009 was a particularly bad year and now I have to say 2013 has been awful. Not because of the number of ticks but due to the fact that I have contracted the dreaded Lyme disease. All because of one of the tiniest little creatures you could imagine decided to have a Sandy-snack and give me a nasty bite.
These little guys are about the size of a sesame seed only they are black. I never saw the culprit. I woke up with a mark under my left arm. The bite started out as a small mark about the size of a dime. It did not itch and it wasn’t really a bother. Two days later it was the size of a playing card and very red. By the time I went to the doctor on day six it was thesizeofa4by6photograph and it was painful and hot. Still the doctor did not think it was a tick bite. She was from a foreign country and couldn’t imagine how I would be exposed to a tick…hmm… I live in the woods and I have four dogs…one is a dust mop of a dachshund that runs through the grass each morning then hops back into bed with me…let’s blame the little dog just for kicks.
I requested the Lyme’s test only to put my mind at ease so you can imagine how shocked I was when the test came back positive.
Early indicators are headache, neck pain, fatigue, fever and chills…. I have experienced all of these over the past three weeks. Every morning I wake up feeling like I have the flu. Recently I have started to feel better but by 3:00 p.m. I’m looking for a quiet couch and a long nap. I can then go back to bed at 8:00 p.m. and sleep through the night with the help of pain medication. I will be on antibiotics for two to four weeks. Hopefully that will be the end of it.
But, like pregnancy, Lyme’s brings out horror stories from just about everywhere. Some people have been incorrectly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis or fibromyalgia or worse. There are people who have been battling the disease for 20 years and can hardly walk up stairs anymore. One lady told me she has to take medicine just to get out of bed in the morning!
So here is my two cents for all of my woodsy friends… if you are diagnosed early your chances are very good of beating Lyme disease before it ruins you for life. If you have a worrisome bite, have it checked out as soon as you can and please request the Lyme’s blood test. Don’t wait for a “bulls eye”-looking bite mark. It seems this is not the best indicator for Lyme disease. I have what was called an atypical bite mark but there have been two other women from the Annandale area who also were diagnosed with Lyme disease and their bites were atypical as well. Be safe and get checked.
If you think you are too small
to be effective, you have never
been in bed with a mosquito
[or a tick].
Betty Reese
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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