DEER TICKS

Last Summer/Fall we started finding these tiny little ticks. So this Spring DH finally sent some in. Of course, they were deer ticks. DH has been having numerous conversations with the Prof at the U of M about them and their findings. While Mom & Noel were out here they came out and did a sweep of the area and found 8 of them in an hour. They said that that was more than they expected and that deer ticks were definitely established here in Killarney! Great. And in our backyard, pretty much. A couple weeks ago, DH spoke to the U of M who advised them that the two ticks he sent in were both positive. One for Lyme and the other with something else. I'm on HIGH alert now. I'm totally freaked out. There is a fellow spouse who has Lyme and suffered a while before they figured out what it was. My Mom's cousin has also been diagnosed with Lyme as well. So my first instinct was to shave LM's head. I contemplated doing it to LP too but thought I better not. Checking for ticks has become a nightly ritual and I told DH, I feel like a monkey constantly picking at the kids checking their hair and everything. DH has pulled one off him. It says it was on him for days. He seen it there and thought it was a birth mark. It was smooth when he touched it and never thought anything of it until it started to get bigger. So we are watching the spot and of course he'll have to watch how he feels. It kinda freaked me out last weekend when I came down with the flu. I was in bed from Friday afternoon until Sunday when I finally dragged my ass out of bed to sit on the deck with our neighbor for the afternoon. I was dragging most of the week for that matter. What scared me was the body aches. My ankle and my tailbone hurt the most. Like it was targetting those two weak spots. Anyways, we are trying to keep the kids out of the back field, we don't walk down the mud road and we'll continue to live like monkeys, preening eachother on a regular basis.