I've been sleeping all day! Yesterday late-afternoon I took my dog for a long walk in Celery Farms, which is a local, um, wildlife reserve? Anyway, there are big paths around a lake and stuff. After seeing Phone Booth I went to sleep pretty early. After 12:30 but before 1:00. Which is early for me.
Sometime after 7 this morning I woke up and noticed that I had a pain in my nipple. I thought I had scratched it or something while sleeping and then it was just sensitive. After a few minutes and after getting less groggy, I think I realised that it hurt even when I wasn't putting pressure on it (I was lying on my stomach), so I thought "What the hell is this?". I lifted up my shirt and it turns out that I had a tick chomping down on me like a centimeter above my nipple.
So, after waking up my dad to have him use a tweezer to take it off me, I went back to sleep, but after checking my entire body for more, changing my clothes to make sure no more could have been hanging out there, and changing my sheets and pillowcases for good measure. Actually, I just stripped all my sheets and threw them in the laundry room, and wound up getting a blanket and pillow and sleeping on the living-room couch.
I woke up a little before noon, and my dad made us Matzah Brai (no clue how to spell it). Very good. Then I went on the computer for a little bit, printed out things to read, went back to my base in the living room, started reading, and went back to sleep. I finally got up a little before 4:20. So I've been sleeping all freaking day. I'm hoping that rather than getting lyme disease[1], I'm actually going through my transformation to having super-powers a'la Spider-Man. Toby McGuire slept a lot that first nite you know. My brother even called me tick-boy (lame) when I woke up for breakfast at noon. I hope I don't get any lame powers, like... what the hell's special about a tick?
Footnotes:
[1]: which I probably won't have. It was a big tick, and I think my dad was right in saying that it's little ticks that carry lyme disease. Plus, it's deer ticks that carry lyme disease, and there are no deer in Celery Farms. We saved the tick and while I was sleeping between 7 and noon my dad called Mahwah Medical, and it turns out no one tests the tick, so you just have to wait to see if you get a ring around the bite.
Saturday, April 26, 2003
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Watch out for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Not as nasty as Lyme, but still deadly if not treated. Watch for a rash or fever within 7-14 days of the bite. If not symptoms within a month I believe, you should be OK. My mom always had us mark the date of the bite on the calendar so we could track it if we developed a fever. My memory of the specific signs is not clear, but a quick google seach might help...