Back in the Lyme Light

As I stew around in bed this evening, unable to get completely comfortable due to the persistent ache lingering in my lower back after recently injuring it in some fashion, I can’t help but let my hypochondria run its course and concoct at least a dozen or so serious if not life threatening illness that this could be a symptom of.  As I sort through the list, the continued tenderness at the joint of my second toe on my right foot has caused Lyme’s Disease to race to the top of the differentials list.  Or perhaps, this is simply a reaction to a passage I just finished reading in Bill Bryson’s, A Walk in the Woods in which he writes:

“If left undetected, it can lie dormant in the human body for years before erupting in a positive fiesta of maladies.  This is a disease for the person who wants to experience it all.  The symptoms include, but are not limited to, headaches, fatigue, fever, chills, shortness of breath, dizziness, shooting pains in the extremities, cardiac irregularities, facial paralysis, muscle spasms, severe mental impairment, loss of control of body functions, and – hardly surprising, really – chronic depression.”

As I read down through the list I can honestly say that while my face feels fine and I can take a deep breath, there is no question as to the severity of my mental impairment, my chronic fatigue and the fact that I could lose control of my bodily functions at any moment.  Of course I try to calm myself by placing my tongue firmly in my cheek, but there is some precedence here.

You see, there was a time when my wife was a practicing Veterinarian.  At that stage in our lives, it was not unheard of for me to accompany her on a late night emergent call if our eldest and then only child was with grandma for the weekend.  Being an ambulatory veterinarian of the rural variety and a woman to boot meant that being called into the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night to treat a rather drunken gentleman’s ailing horse was reason enough to ask that I come along.  Even for the most mundane proceedure, I would gladly ride along since we didn’t get that much alone time with two busy careers and a toddler in the house.  However, on this particular evening, the gentleman’s intoxicated state made my attendance feel mandatory for safety’s sake.  When we arrived, it was much to do about nothing, as he was a jovial fellow with a truly sick animal.  He did, however, live in the middle of nowhere and this creature was going to need real emergent treatment on the spot.  As was occasionally the case, I would gladly lend an extra hand when needed.  Nothing that required actual training of course, but I can be a fetch-it boy with the best of them.

I won’t get into the gory details, but my assignment on this particular evening was to scrub the horse’s testicles once he had been sedated and laid on his side.  I still haven’t figured out if this was a joke or not since the horse seemed to be suffering from a respiratory condition, but you know what they say . . . idle hands.  So, here I am, in the middle of nowhere with my law license in my back pocket under the romantic glow of a pickup truck’s headlights scrubbing a horses nuts in clothes that I would have proudly worn to the office.  Sometimes I wonder if I REALLY married up.  In the end, the horse was successfully treated and we made our way back home. 

 At the time, I was in fairly good physical condition and the thought of seeing me naked, fresh from the shower, didn’t make my wife’s skin crawl as I can only presume it does now, so she was present when I exited the shower the following morning.  In looking back, I can only presume she was checking out my ass when she said, “that doesn’t look good.”  Geez, talk about a shot to the ego.  “What do you mean it doesn’t look good” I said with and offended tone.  “No, look” she said as she turned my ass toward the mirror.  As I looked over my shoulder I could see a fairly red bullseye on my right ass cheek.  “You know, your right, that doesn’t look good”.  She looks at me without so much as a pause and says, “I think you have Lyme’s Disease”. 


My mind began to race.  Lyme’s Disease?  I had heard of that before, but was uncertain as to whether it lead to instantaneous death and loss of bowel control or was simply something that would flare up from time to time and cause a leaky discharge.  Neither one sounded good to me, so I agreed that I should see a doctor.  Thankfully our family doctor was a light hearted fellow who shuffled around his office in a pair of Birkenstocks.  In a drop you pants and shove your ass in your doctor’s face moment, I loudly inquired “So doc, ever seen anything like this before?”.  In the same concise manner as my wife had relayed the same information, he announced that it looked like the signs of Lyme’s Disease and that the next step would be to take blood to check for the Lyme’s titer.

Tests came back with a BINGO . . . Lyme’s Disease, though it would seem the real test was the prominent rash on my ass.   “Ok, doc, how long have I got?  A year?  Less?”.  I was informed that we had caught the problem so early that I would likely not even show any symptoms and that the appropriate treatment would be to hit it with some heavy dose antibiotics to eradicate the condition.  Sounded good to me.  By mid-way through the treatment phase however, I did start noting some rather alarming stiffness in the joints of both hands.  Despite Mr. Bryson’s fairly accurate description above, migratory joint pain is one of the essential symptoms of the disease.   Eventually all such mild discomfort faded and since then I would consider myself to be right as rain.  Years have since passed and I wouldn’t argue that it has caused me even a moment’s reflection until now.  Now I find myself tempted to pour over whatever medical information I can find on the internet to see if there are any long term effects of having had this disease.  Perhaps these seemingly unrelated ailments in my foot and back are the beginning of the end and the natural consequence of treating such a heinous condition as not even a blip on life’s radar or maybe my back would feel better if I just went to bed and got some rest.  In the end, the moral of the story is this, never touch a horses nuts or it will come back to bite you in the ass . . . Words to live by my friends . . . words to live by.  R.