Tick Bites

Blasted ticks - they are bad this year! Or so I have been told! Ticks are so gross with their little legs and blood sucking thirst. We first became aware that they were worse than usual when Mark received a few phone calls asking if he sprayed for ticks. And then we started finding them on our clothes after we would come in from being outside. Of course I got somewhat panicky because of the threat of Lyme's disease. Mark got online and did some research to find that the chances of actually contracting Lyme's disease is pretty slim. So, I decided to stop worrying about it.

Fast forward a bit and we had removed 1 tick from Eden, 2 from Shane, 2 from Judah and 1 from myself. It started becoming somewhat routine around here after the kids had been playing outside to find one somewhere. I worried mostly about Eden because they are harder to spot on her sweet skin.

Fast forward again to last Saturday. Mark and I returned home from Sherri's wedding and I noticed Shane had a small rash on his neck. I looked closer and thought maybe it was poison since Judah was sporting some nice poison on his body. Later that afternoon I found Shane asleep on the couch. Never a good sign for my rambunctious 6 year old to be sleeping on a beautiful summer afternoon. Sunday morning he woke up with a bit of fever and bad headache. He slept a lot of Sunday and when he was awake didn't want to walk because his head hurt so bad. Monday rolled around and it was more of the same. The only thing that was changing was the rash on his neck. It had gotten a bit bigger. So....off to the doctor. He was checked out good and sent for blood work. His labs came back negative for Lyme's disease but on Wednesday he wasn't any better and the rash had grown - alot!! So....back to the doctor. He seemed puzzled because his symptoms were classic but the test had been negative. He re-ran all the blood work plus some additional tests. All came back negative again but in the meantime he called and spoke with a rheumatologist that he had worked with. Shane's doctor has only been practicing a relatively short time (he is young). The rheumatologist advised him to treat based on his symptoms since the antibody test is fairly inconclusive! I have been so impressed by our doctor and thrilled with how thorough he has been. We started his 3 weeks worth of antibiotics yesterday. Shane is perking up now and getting back to his rambunctious self. Thank goodness for webmd, right? Helped me to figure out what could be causing the rash.

And on a funny note - I was talking with Dr. Cook and somehow we got onto the subject of how long he had been practicing....etc. etc. I told him my cousin had just started practicing and that my uncle was also a pediatrician. He wondered what my uncles name was and where he practiced. So I told him. He looked at me and said, "Really? Your uncle is the man!" He has never met him personally but has spoken with him and heard only rave things about Dr. Stoltzfus while he was in residency at Geisinger in Danville. He said to me, "You are practically royalty." I got a good laugh. But in all honesty I am very proud my uncle has that type of reputation! So Miriam, if you read this please tell Elam that he is the man!!