I suspect I may have been bitten by a tick. Initially I thought it had happened on Sunday, but after researching Lyme Disease I realized I had a rash resembling Erythema Migrans on the right side of my hip last week. At the time, I thought it was a pimple made mad by the constant irritation of my jeans rubbing up against my hip, but it grew to be the size of a small marble and the area around it became oval and strangely red, like a bullseye. I thought it might be a spider-bite and figured I would wait a day or two and see if it worsened. By the time this weekend arrived, it had all but vanished.
Yesterday, out of the blue, I began to feel the heaviness of sudden onset nausea, headache, and fatigue. I thought it strange that the base of my spine ached. I looked up the symptoms of Lyme Disease and found they match the ones ailing me - though they so closely mimic the common cold and other flu-like symptoms that it's hard to tell. The issue is further confounded by the methods of detection; diagnosis seems unreliable, giving false positives and missing the presence of the disease entirely. My prognosis isn't good, friends.
I go hiking a lot - nearly every weekend. It's unlikely I was bitten on the hip by a tick during a hike; that sentence sounds musical. It's more likely that I picked up a stowaway on a trail, a tick with its fat little thumb raised, hungry and patient, waiting calmly on my shoulder until I got home, until I took of my clothes, where it would launch its fangs into the taut skin of my bony hip.
I didn't even feel it.
There's a reason we fear the things hidden in our closets and beneath our beds - the things we do not see are the things most liable to destroy us.
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