Ticked Off

I can't remember the last time I had been this sick for this long.

I never noticed the tick bite but because we had been camping, and the deerflies and mosquitoes had already had their fair share of me, I may never have noticed, anyway. So there's no guarantee that the tick had even gotten to me on our camp trip to Killarney, though it's a pretty good guess.

Coming home, I felt pretty good, overall. We had done a lot of kayaking and hiking, and because I've been fairly active and fit over this year—with all of my virtual challenges—the four-day adventure only invigorated me more.

The weather in Ottawa, after our trip, was too hot for cycling. With the humidex in the high thirties to low fourties, it just wasn't safe to ride. And I was itching to ride because I hadn't done so since before Killarney, and I was used to cycling every other day. By the time the heat wave ended, on Friday, August 27, it was more than a week until I was able to get on my bike.

Because I had fallen behind in my current virtual challenge, the 3,670-kilometre Route 66 trek, from Chicago to Santa Monica, I wanted to get a good ride in, so I pedalled a little more than 60K through Manotick, Greely, Osgoode, Kars, and back. The ride was great, apart from two drivers who didn't seem to see me until the last minute (but I digress).

After my ride, I took a shower and as I was drying, I was hit by sudden chills and body aches, and not the kind of aches that I feel after a long ride, which can be worked out with some good stretching. Although it wasn't even nine o'clock in the evening, I put myself to bed.

I felt worse on Saturday, with a headache and extreme fatigue added to the aches and chills, but I took some time during the day to try to get a few chores done around the house. Or kids, after all, were moving to their respective colleges and universities on the coming Wednesday, and we had to make sure that they had everything they needed.

But I just didn't have the energy to put in more than a half hour at a time and would pass out on our sofa for a couple of hours before trying to pitch in again. By Saturday night, I was done.

DW suggested that perhaps I had picked up a variant strain of COVID-19, and perhaps I should get tested. I dismissed that notion: after all, besides being around her while we were camping and our kids, where would I have picked up COVID?

On Sunday, still feeling bad, I went to Brewer Park Community Centre to get the test.

On Monday, I was feeling a bit better, so I worked from home for the morning. But by noon, the chills were back in full swing and my energy was low (I had also not eaten much because I had no appetite), so I went back to bed. But not before my COVID test results had come back, and they were negative.

So what had its hold on me?

DW and I have a good friend who had contracted Lyme disease many years ago. It had gone for years, undiagnosed, and she was still suffering ill effects to this day. DW had been chatting with our friend and she said my symptoms, combined with the timeline of our camping and the incubation period, might point to Lyme. She suggested that this line of inquiry might be worth pursuing.

Now, I had discovered no red mark on my body—the tell-tale bull's eye—that pointed to a tick bite. I had, however, felt an isolated pain in my left calf, but had no bruising (I don't bruise easily, anyway). I had dismissed the pain as simply having bumped into something while hiking or kayaking, as it happens often enough.

On Tuesday morning, though, a red mark did appear on this spot and I wasn't feeling any better, so I decided that it might be a good idea to visit my doctor. But after calling my doctor and not being able to get any appointment that day, I told them I'd have to go to the hospital because I didn't think this could wait.

For the first time since before the pandemic started, I headed to the emergency department at the Queensway Carleton Hospital. Let me tell you, seeing people with lacerations, concussions, and broken bones, it opens your eyes to just how fragile we are and how life can deal us a bad hand. We need to be good to one another while we can, folks. We only have this one life to be our best.

I waited for more than six hours before a doctor saw me. At one point, with my chills and the hospital air conditioning, I was curled up in a ball, in my chair shivering. A nurse brought me a blanket and took my vitals, a second time, to make sure I was okay.

While I waited, I received texts from DW and a very good friend of mine who has battled Lyme disease for decades, who went with the disease, undiagnosed, for years before she had a sympathetic ear. She gave me all kinds of information to pass onto the doctor: she asked me to request an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test, though she said it would likely come back negative because it's not generally effective against early onset of Lyme. She said to ask for a Western blot test, which was more effective. She told me to insist on starting treatment right away, to get a prescription for an antibiotic (she suggested 100 mg of doxycycline, administered twice a day for 21 days).

She's not a doctor but she knows a lot about Lyme disease.

The actual doctor greeted me and asked me what the problem was, and I explained that I suspected I had Lyme disease. He then leaned against the wall, crossed one leg over the other, folded his arms, and in a condescending voice, asked, "What makes you think you have Lyme disease?" As though I was the tenth person, today, claiming to have the affliction.

I went through my symptoms: chills, aches, low-grade fever, extreme fatigue, loss of appetite. I told him that I had been camping for four days and had done lots of hiking and kayaking, that the region I was in has had reports of Lyme-carrying ticks. I hiked up my shorts to show him the red mark on my leg, but he barely looked at it.

I told him that I had been tested for COVID but that the test came back negative. I explained that I've been around my wife and kids, and none of them had exhibited any of my symptoms. Clearly, I wasn't spreading whatever I had.

The doctor was totally dismissive, even after I relayed all of the information that my friend had provided. At one point, I was tempted to fold my arms and ask him, "What makes you think I don't have Lyme disease?"

He took another look at my leg, but only long enough to take his pen and trace a circle around the edges of the red mark. "Monitor the rash to see if it gets any bigger, but I'm not prepared to prescribe antibiotics at this point." He reluctantly agreed to take some blood to test, but at this point, he was done with me.

By the time I got home, I was so worn out and so upset, I could only go to bed to rest. I didn't have the strength to help my kids assemble their belongings for their move, the next day.

On Wednesday, I was no better off but no worse. DW, knowing that there was no way I'd be able to make the trip to the Toronto, left with the girls and without me. It was heartbreaking to give my daughters hugs and wave from the driveway, but on the off-chance that I was contagious with a bug, spending five or more hours in a vehicle was the last thing any of them needed, especially our kids, who were about to start their school year.

As soon as my doctor's office opened, I called to see about an appointment with my doctor. She was booked solid for the day but there was a nurse practitioner in the clinic who would be able to meet over the phone with me. At that appointment, we went through my symptoms and the details of my camp trip. This time, I was armed with printouts from the Ontario Health guidelines for diagnosing and treating Lyme disease. The nurse, with a computer at her disposal, did the same.

Fifteen minutes later, the nurse had sent a prescription for doxycycline to my nearby pharmacy. One-hundred milligrams, taken twice a day, but for 10 days. I'm going to get an extension to 21 days.

At the time of publication, I'll have completed five days of the meds. By Saturday, they started kicking in and I had more energy—enough to try a 20K cycle to Manotick and back. Yesterday, I braved a 40K ride and was fine. Today, I'm back at work for the first time in more than a week.

Two weeks after my camping trip, I'm on the mend. And while I never saw the tick who bit me, this experience has taught me to always check myself from head to toe after being out in nature. If you find a tick, follow guidelines for removing it and keep it if you can. But if you feel any symptoms, don't let a dismissive doctor stop you from getting the answers you need.

Because Lyme disease really bites.