Let me tell you, the last week has been tough. Are you ready for a very random blog post?
About a week and a half ago I was ready to take the world on. I had a head of steam, was out shopping at Lowe's for some lumber to build some master bathroom cabinets, and was getting ready to both attend a few Nationals games and knock out a ton of little projects.
We then spent a bunch of time running around at our new house and watching the Osrpey and other local wildlife...
...and generally being productive. Life was good.
Then last Tuesday I started to feel bad. It was about lunch time and I just started feeling tired and lethargic. By about 4:00pm I was feeling progressively worse and had to leave work and head home. By the time I got home I could barely walk. I ambled in the front door, dropped my bag and shoes, walked right upstairs and crawled into bed.
I don't get sick often, and when I do, I don't like to rest much, just enough to get well. But this, this was different. I've never felt so sick so quickly, and I've never had an overwhelming need just to go to bed. My joints ached, my whole body was slow, I was hot and cold, I felt sick to my stomach, stomach craps, eventually vomiting, and my heart was racing/beating irregularly. To me, this was all just crazy, and I was not doing well!
As I was laying there, rolling around and trying to get comfortable, I had an itch on the back of my leg and my hand hit something that felt weird. I pulled myself up to look at what I'd touched on my leg and there it was, a deer tick firmly attached to the back of my right thigh, feeding away.
I couldn't believe it. I've never been bit by a tick in my life and this little bastard had hitchhiked on my leg for who knows how long. And if this guy had been on my leg, was it possible that another had bitten me and I hadn't seen it?
While I had none of the traditional visible signs associated with things like Lyme or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, like the bulls-eye rash or spots around my wrists or ankles, I had many of the traditional symptoms associated with them or many of the other things one can get from a tick bite. As a result, my doctor started me on 20 days of antibiotics to ensure we knock anything out that I might have, we sent the tick off for testing (since we still had him), and I basically laid in bed for about five days with all of my grand plans of project work completely derailed. The only thing productive I did those five days was ordering two tick removal tweezers just in case we'd ever need them again, since normal tweezers just don't work very well for tick removal.
Then, after nearly a week, I finally started to feel like myself again. We headed back out to the house to do a little more work and so I could keep recovering by doing important things like roasting marshmallows by the fire pit. It was pretty much a perfect night in spite of still not feeling 100%.
After we wrapped up for the night and headed inside, we decided to do a tick check on us and Lulu, just in case. While we're not certain where I picked up my stow away, we think it was probably in the yard of our house. Well, wouldn't you know it, we found another tick crawling along on Lulu's leg, even though we just applied her monthly flea and tick treatment a few days earlier. We quickly removed it with our special tick tweezers that had already arrived and were lucky enough to get this dude before he started feeding. But it reinforced just how diligent we're going to need to be after we spend time outside.
How gross is that?
Lulu, for one, does not mind all of this additional attention. She's blissfully unaware and I think she sees tick checks as a generally relaxing massage that should be embraced and enjoyed. Meanwhile, we're looking into various options for treatment of our yard and additional protective approaches to reduce the large number of ticks we're seeing. This includes anything from yard spraying to vinegar mixes to lint rollers (to pick up ticks from clothing and dog fur after running around outside).
Would love to hear your experiences if you've had issues with ticks in your yard and how you were able to take care of them.
When I wasn't generally feeling like complete crap (which was pretty much just on Memorial Day) we were actually able to get a little bit of work done, but we lost a solid week of our planned effort and most of a long weekend, which really stinks. Wendy was able to pick up the slack by ripping out the tile behind the shower to expose the freeze damaged piping, but that primarily had us asking the simple question of "who felt tile was necessary on this wall?" She showed that wall who's boss, though she was a little worse for wear after all was said and done.
Hopefully we'll have a bunch more exciting DIY related updates in the coming weeks, and far fewer "I was sick and basically crippled by illness." But Lyme and everything else ticks can bring is no laughing matter, and I've known people that have not been fortunate to catch their ailments early and knock it out. So I realize I'm very fortunate in this respect.
But one thing is for sure, we've got to be proactive and do something about these ticks so it doesn't become a much larger issue as time goes on.
