I have Lyme Disease
Just to prove that I still have the password memorized, I decided to post something. Oh, and hey, this is on my mind.
I have Lyme disease. How can I be sure? Well, you be the judge.
Not to fret. I am invincible already on the treatment. Let's see if I can't rewind everything in my head back to the beginning, shall we?
We went camping for the weekend of August 13th to 16th, at our seemingly perennial spot, Cape Henlopen. Our first year there, we picked out a site, sight-unseen, and ended up on a sand plot with little to no shade. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. Since then, we've worked on improving our site selection. This year we had picked out a site with plenty of shade and lots of wide open space for Dylan to run around in. We weren't on top of the neighboring sites, but they were nearby. The only real problem we had this year was the ticks.
They were crazy this year! In years past, we might have gotten one or two, shared between the two of us, for the entire weekend. This year we managed an impressive 8-10 average, per day, each. (Thankfully, Dylan was mostly spared. We only found 1-2 on him for the entire weekend.) Every day began and ended with a bountiful tick hunt. Were we orangutans, we would have dined quite nicely. And yes, I just implied that we managed to pick up more ticks overnight, too.
I guess it should be obvious to say that I got it the worst. I seem to be the only one with Lyme disease — thankfully, if one can be thankful for that.
On Sunday morning, I found two hangers-on — one on the outside of each buttock — while showering, both slightly engorged, and both quite willing to be removed. If you've ever struggled to get a tick to GTFO, then you understand my contentedness at their easy departure. I didn't think much of it, at the time.
After we got home on Monday afternoon, I removed another nine ticks from myself, and found one in Dylan's hair. Later that night, I noticed a splotchy, red, slightly raised bump on the outside of each buttock, right where those two little buggers had been feeding on me. After a few days of treatment with Cortisone showed no signs of improving, I made arrangements to see a doctor (Friday morning, the 20th — the same day that we found out that we're having another boy).
The doc thought my splotchy butt was just a local allergic reaction, but we agreed that the likelihood that I was host to an infected tick over the course of the weekend was high (he estimated 1 in 6 ticks has it, I probably hosted 40+ over the weekend, you can do the math). In addition, the likelihood that I would suffer and adverse reaction to the treatment (antibiotics) was low — so low, in fact, that it was less likely than the possibility that I had Lyme. Being pragmatists, we decided I should take the antibiotics, and get blood-work done to confirm. He sent me home and had his staff call in a prescription for Doxy-something. I stopped on my way home to pick it up, and did. That may seem like a boring detail now, but I'm going to tell you why it's interesting in the next paragraph.
I paid for my drugs and the pharmacist sent me packing with less than a dozen words spoken between us. When you factor in greetings, the delivery of my name, her delivery of the total cost, and my farewell, that doesn't leave much wiggle room. I would later find out that I was only given a partial fill of the medicine. I did find it a little bit odd that a course of antibiotics would only last 4 days, but figured that the pharmacological equivalent of Moore's Law was at play, thanked Moore, and went about my business.
Days later, after finishing my short course of Antibiotics, I started getting those nagging computer-voiced calls from the pharmacy to let me know I have a prescription ready to be picked up. I reported it to Megan, and together we assumed that it was a mistake, since I had already picked up my prescription. Probably because I was there before they had even sorted it into the bottle for me. We were wrong.
When the calls continued, I asked Megan to stop by the pharmacy on her way home one day, wondering what it was that I might have waiting for me. I got home that night, and she explained that she had stopped and picked up my order, but that, "you're not going to like it."
It was also around this time that I got a call from my doctor's office to let me know that the results of my bloodwork came back negative. How reassuring!
We still have no idea why nobody mentioned that the original pickup was only a partial fill, but it is what it is. I consulted a doctor, who told me just to go back to taking the Doxy-whatever; that the brief gap was not desirable, but shouldn't hurt anything. So I have been dutifully taking this stuff; which let me tell you, is no easy pill to swallow… (See what I did there?) You have to take it either an hour before food, or two hours after, so that it doesn't bind to the food and skip through the body unabsorbed. You also can't have any milk during that time, and you shouldn't lie down because it can cause heart-burn or acid-reflux like symptoms. It's not easy to fit this stuff into my routine, but I'm making it work.
Then today Megan noticed the tell-tale rash on my back, at a spot that has been itchy all day. So much for negative blood tests and probability working out in my favor.
I guess that's about it. My back itches, and I am tired. Good night.
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