Lyme Aid

Well, I managed to do something absolutely brilliant to my health.

Apparently it happened when I went to a family reunion in the mountains of Ohio in late June. We stopped to go cemetery hopping and try to find all the old folks' stones, and I was wearing short sleeves, capris and sandals. (I mean, come on, the cemeteries weren't THAT overgrown or I'd have been wearing jeans, boots, a hat, and a flannel long sleeved shirt and wielding a machete!) And, while that area was pretty scarce on deer back in the early 1900s, those mountains are full of deer and their delightful little plague-carrying passengers today. So I was bitten by a deer tick, which I didn't find for several days. Those things are minute, until they feed, and then they are merely tiny. Even when I found it, I didn't know what it was.

(Yes, all you western Ohioans, I know it is flat there where you are. Very flat. However, my people are, as my uncle put it once, hill-jacks from southeastern Ohio. Where it borders West Virginia. You know, that funny little state wedged into the corner between Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, that is nothing but mountains? Oddly, the mountains don't just stop at the state line.)

(And yes, all you folks from Colorado and points west, I know the Rockies and so forth are "real mountains" and you think the Blue Ridge and so forth here in the east are "just hills". Though I must point out that the mountains in the eastern U.S. are simply so much older that they have worn down and are therefore more to be admired for their stalwart presence over so long a time.)

Hmmm. Evidently Lyme disease causes irritability, too. I never realized that I was bothered by those things before.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was apparently bitten by a tick, and then started having really strange symptoms. I was exhausted and didn't want to drag myself out of bed, didn't have the energy to do much but flip the On-switch of my computer. ("I really have to get a good night's sleep or stop being lazy, or something. Or maybe my thyroid is sluggish.") My leg muscles started to ache, and then twitch--like your esophagus does with the hiccups. ("Must have overworked at something.") My joints in my hands and knees felt as if I had arthritis, except when they felt like someone was stabbing them with an ice pick. ("Wow, am I getting arthritis like my folks?") I had headaches (and neck aches) that wouldn't go away for days and extra floaters in my eyes. ("Slept wrong. No, ragweed. No, on second thought, migraine.") Food tasted and smelled rotten. ("Oooh, am I getting the flu?") I had dizzy spells. ("Maybe high blood pressure?") And worst, by late August, my brain took a vacation, and I'm not talking just forgetting where I tossed the car keys, my glasses, a pen, or the cordless phone--I'm talking forgetting the name of our hamster, of my dear friend at church, of that fast food restaurant half a mile from here that has those golden, what do you call them, arches. Couldn't think my way out of a wet paper bag. Couldn't finish a sentence, because when I stopped to try to remember the word I was after, I couldn't remember what I had been trying to say. ("Am I getting Alzheimers like my grandma?! God forbid--at least she was 80 when the symptoms started, I'm not even 50!")

So I went to the doctor and asked if I had hypothyroid, muscle strain, arthritis, high blood pressure, migraines, flu, and Alzheimers, suddenly and all at the same time. He asked if I had been bitten by a tick, and then I remembered the little brown thing ("Is this a skin tag?") I had pulled off my skin and thrown away in Ohio in June. He knows the area I was in and knows about the high deer (and tick) population there. So he said it sounded like I had Lyme disease, gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and took some blood to test. The test came back negative for Lyme, but apparently that doesn't mean it wasn't; just means I wasn't producing antibodies detectable by the test. So he told me to keep taking the antibiotic and that the symptoms ought to gradually go away. But not to worry. At least I got help during the early stages of the disease.

So I'm done with the antibiotic now, thank goodness, and my hands and knees don't hurt anymore, and I'm rid of the headaches (except the ones that really were from the ragweed, which should stop any day now when we get a good frost). I've only had one dizzy spell since finishing the antibiotic, and my brain at least sent me a post-card ("Wish you were here! I'll be back from vacation soon!"). I'm still having difficulty touch-typing, for some reason, but I expect that will come back soon too.

Do yourself a favor and make sure you wear long pants, closed shoes, and bug repellant if you are going to do genealogy research in a cemetery. Better yet, have a look at www.interment.net or at www.findagrave.com and see if the gravestone info you want is online, before you go outside. It's a jungle out there.