12/19/15 7:02 PM

When it's a tick bite! Add in the classic bulls-eye rash of Lyme disease and I'm now on antibiotics for the next three weeks.

And no, I am NOT going to post a picture!

12/19/15 10:41 PM

Kind of wishing you didn't post a post. ;)

I mean now that I got the picture in my mind's eye.

I do not miss those little suckers from TN I can tell you!

12/20/15 4:42 AM

That crap can become chronic. Follow those doctor's orders to the letter.

You would think with all my time in the woods I would have a tick or two on occasion but I am tick bite free.

My family was at my daughter's farm a few weeks ago and they were all over the place, we picked them off our clothes constantly but none of us got nibbled on.

12/20/15 7:35 AM

at least it leaves a distinctive calling-card.

good luck with your treatment!

12/20/15 2:31 PM

...is my girlfriend, who's a Nurse Practitioner. Practicing on the Cape, she sees Lyme Disease all the time. I was down there and in RI over the weekend, pretty close to "ground zero" for Lyme, but I'm not sure where I picked up the tick. Either way, we caught it within a couple of days of when I was bitten and I started treatment immediately, so I'm confident that I'll be fine.

Unfortunately for Linda, in her last 'cross race of the season, she crashed and broke a couple of ribs. Other than being really sore, she's OK, but disappointed that she didn't quite make it through the year without an injury.

12/20/15 4:39 PM

I've been treated twice for Lyme. Both times it was caught sometime after the bite, so I don't know what the long term effects will be. I've never been 64 before, and how much of my joint "creakiness" is normal, I dunno. I'm in mild pain almost every day regardless of my activity levels. I don't let it interfere and take OTC meds as needed.

My genetics would seem to indicate that I have a good chance of making it into my 90's, and I worry about how much worse it may be in 20 or 30 years.

Erik - I certainly hope there were no nibbles, but make sure you really scrutinize closely. The deer ticks that carry Lyme can be incredibly small. Even after one was pointed out to me on my granddaughter, I still thought it was a tiny mole or freckle. It took a magnifying glass to reveal the moving legs. Ewwww.

12/20/15 6:24 PM

I am very familiar with ticks.

So a TMI story y'all will completely cringe at. ;)

I was a teen and just like now I spent most of my fall in the woods, fields and swamps hunting. My mother would traditionally make chili for supper when my pop and I spent Saturday afield.

As I ate my chili at the supper table I suddenly felt an icepick stab through the end of my "member". It was the most excruciating pain I can remember up till that point in my life, it tipped the scales well above a 8 on the chart you see at the hospitals.

I jumped up and ran to the bathroom, still in my hunting clothes. and ripped off my pants to find a deer tick had pricked my pain meter by impaling the most sensitive part of my body in a effort to become engorged on my blood.

I pulled and pulled and finally got it off. Lucky for me, lyme disease was not an issue in the 80s.

That left a lasting mark on my psyche. It deflated my ego for months and luckily I recovered fully but only after a great deal of rehab.

12/21/15 6:37 AM

...been there too, a few years ago. That one was a common wood tick and other than freaking me out, it didn't do any damage.

Remember, ticks like warm, dark, moist places. Be careful out there...