This post is coming to you from a new laptop! Ed went out last Friday and bought us a new Gateway since our old Dell has slowed down to a snail’s pace. Isn’t he the BEST?!?

I think Ed might be feeling sorry for me. I haven’t been feeling well lately, but now I’m started to feel better.

A couple of weeks ago, I had just taken a shower and was toweling off when I noticed something. It was a freckle that really shouldn’t have been there. A freckle that stuck out from my skin. A freckle that wasn’t a freckle after all…it was a freckle with legs. Turns out that freckle was a deer tick. As my brain was panicking, I carefully looked myself over and found a couple more ticks, yanked them off, and then ran downstairs to check Lily and Emmy. I found three deer ticks on each of them. I’m shuddering as I type this…ew, ew, EW!

We had just spent the weekend hiking in the woods down in Kentucky, which is where I think we got the ticks. The girls’ pediatrician put them on antibiotics just as a precaution against Lyme disease. She suggested I see my doctor as well, since the ticks were embedded in our skin for two to three days already. (Excuse me while I shudder some more — EW!)

My doctor put me on an antibiotic as well, only I was to take the super-duper killer of that nasty Lyme bacteria, while the girls took amoxicillin since they are too young to take the super-duper antibiotic. My system did not respond well to this medication. I felt like such a wimp. I’ve weathered cancer, for heaven’s sake, and chemo, and two Cesarean sections, and this antibiotic whipped me.

The first morning I took doxycyline, I felt more nauseous than I ever have before. After telling myself, “I won’t throw up, I won’t throw up,” I finally threw up my breakfast. Me, who never threw up once during chemo! My nausea was so bad that the doctor prescribed an anti-nausea medication. Then there was heartburn. The Saturday night after I had started taking the medicine, my chest was burning so bad that I couldn’t sleep. The next day, I noticed that I was having a lot of pain when I was swallowing food. The pain continued to get worse, right in the middle of my chest. On Tuesday, I begged my doctor to let me stop taking the doxycyline. She agreed. By Thursday, every time I swallowed, pain stabbed throughout my chest and into my back. Either the heartburn or the medication had damaged the lining of my esophagus. I called the doctor again, and she prescribed a medicine to help my esophagus heal. And all this was happening because I was taking medicine to prevent Lyme disease…I was never actually sick! I’m finally able to eat without pain, and the constant heartburn feeling I was having is gone.

Ed had some deer ticks on him as well, but his doctor didn’t prescribe anything. Ed is supposed to be watchful and check in with his doctor over the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, the girls have started school and I began a new, part time job. I supposed it’s a good thing that time just keeps rolling; I barely had time to feel sorry for myself. So there you go…an explanation at last!