Sunday afternoon I was standing at my kitchen sink when I felt something itchy on my back.  It was in the weird, hard-to-get-to spot just a couple of inches under my bra-strap and about an inch to the right of my spine.  You know… that spot that you can’t usually reach.  Sunday was the exception to that rule.  When the itching got intense, my Mrs. Incredible flexibility skills kicked in and I reached back there and scratched the itchy spot.  An action I quickly regretted.  As I scratched, I felt a burn and was fairly certain that I just removed something that had been pretty firmly attached.  Inspecting my finger, my fears were confirmed.  I had just dislodged a deer tick and I wasn’t quite certain I had removed the entire thing.

Fast forward 48 hours.  The bite grew from a dime-sized red spot to a saucer-sized spot with a very clear bulls-eye appearance and a scaly bump in the middle.  And…. my throat started to hurt.  And… lymph nodes started swelling in my neck, and any other place you can imagine.  By 4am this morning, I was…. absolutely….miserable.  I got up and gargled with lysterine with the hopes that it would kill whatever had set my throat on fire.  Being a typical internet-junkie I laid in bed from 4am-6am reading every single thing I could find on tick bites and tonsils.  Why do I do that to myself? I filled my head with fear AND missed out on sleep.  Despite my mounting fears and a body that was telling me I must be terribly ill, by 6:30am, I was bent over on my bed sobbing and trying to claim wellness.

Fast forward to 3:30pm est today (May 9, 2012).  The emergency room doctor enters my room, taps my shoulder, and says, “I’m so sorry.” (Just for the record, NO good news ever comes after a doctor apologizes.) “You, my dear, have strep throat.  AND, you have Lyme antibodies.  They don’t usually show up so fast and we don’t usually catch it until it’s done a lot of damage.  So, maybe the strep is a good thing.”  Ummm….. Sure, Doc.

So there you have it.  I can hardly swallow.  I hurt from my head to my toes.  I have a big nasty scaly thing on my back (or at least that’s what I’ve been told… I can’t actually see it for myself).  I have a fever.  And… I should count myself blessed because without the strep, it would have taken weeks or even months for them to realize I had been exposed to Lyme disease and by that time I could have all sorts of nasty symptoms.

I think I’m going to call it a day.