My claim to fame

When I was in fourth grade, I found a tick had settled in for a meal at the nape of my neck. I pulled it off, flushed it, and didn’t think much about it beyond, “Oh, gross!”

I grew up in an area that had more empty fields than houses. The field behind our yard was overgrown with blackberry canes and long grass. It was also an excellent habitat for ticks. These ticks aren’t the ones you see in the news, the tiny deer tick. No, these were the garden-variety dog ticks. They’d hang out, waiting for someone or something to walk by, and they’d hitch a ride. Once on you, they’d head for a quiet place to take a bite.

Dog ticks aren’t easy to kill when they’re hungry. When they’ve had a full meal, they look like something from a horror story: little gray balloons with their heads and legs sticking out from their bloated bodies. These are easy, but messy, to kill. The hungry ones, however, are flat and impervious to all but the hardest of fingernails or sharpest of pins.

The telltale tickling of a tick making its way along an arm or leg was an unwelcome way to be awakened on a hot summer night. They were common enough, though, that I slept with a baby-food jar half-filled with turpentine on my bedside table. When I captured one of the little blood-suckers, I’d squeeze it between a thumb and forefinger while, with the other hand, I’d take the lid off the jar. In the darkness of the night, I’d drop the critter into the liquid, rubbing my thumb and forefinger together to make sure that it had made the trip to its doom. I grew quite skilled at this and was able to remove and replace the lid on the jar of turpentine without spilling a drop.

I can’t remember of my father gave me the jar or whether this was something I did on my own. It boggles my mind, though, that any amount of turpentine was allowed out of the basement (where my dad had his workshop).

On the day that I found the tick attached to me, I got off the bus that afternoon complaining that my neck was stiff and that my head hurt. My mother was skeptical; however, in her defense, I wasn’t doing at all well in school that year. In fact, she met with my teacher while I waited in the hall. I didn’t really care what they said, so I wasn’t paying attention. However, the following statement my teacher made has stuck with me all these years later: “She can do the work — she just don’t.” Oh, Arturo, prince of irony!

From the day I came home complaining of a stiff neck and a headache, the events of the following two weeks were a bit fluid — for me, anyway.

I became really sick, and my doctor prescribed penicillin. The next day, I developed red spots on my hands and feet. My mother called the doctor, and he discontinued the penicillin, thinking I was having an allergic reaction to it.

By the next day, I was as limp as a dishrag, and my mother bundled me up in a blanket and drove me to the doctor’s office. (Note: I don’t recall if I saw the doctor before this — this was the only visit I can remember.)

In the examination room, I was placed on the exam table, still wrapped in a blanket. I was pretty much out of it, but I remember that my doctor pulled out a huge medical textbook.

“I’ve done some research, and I think this is what Laurel has,” he said, pointing to a description in the book. “Rocky mountain spotted fever.” He and my mother had a conversation that I don’t remember at all. However, in one of the highlights in my childhood, my beloved doctor picked me up and carried me out to the car, placed me in the back seat, and made sure that the blanket covered me.

Things went downhill from there. Soon I was covered head to toe with spots. I’d stopped eating and wasn’t drinking. Our neighbor, who had a little gadget that crushed ice cubes, sent over a few cups of crushed ice. I suppose the thought was that if I wouldn’t drink liquids, at least I could suck on the ice chips.

So, what’s going on in the mind of a really sick kid? It wasn’t too bad, actually. My temperature was up around 105F, so the hallucinations kept me pretty entertained.

In one hallucination, I played hide and seek with Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Obviously, they were the ones who hid since I didn’t have the energy to move. They liked to hide in the curtains, and I was able to point to where I thought they’d secreted themselves.

I upset both of my parents pretty badly with another hallucination. In this one, hundreds of baby spiders were on my bedroom ceiling. You may recall that at the end of “Charlotte’s Web,” her children all created little webs, which allowed them to fly away on the breeze. Well, I’m sure that this is where this particular vision came from. In my hallucination, however, the spiders were all in pastel shades, so they weren’t that scary. Still, I hid under the bedclothes, yelling about the spiders coming down all over the room until one of my parents got a broom and swept them off the ceiling.

Early on, when my parents were still trying to tempt me to eat, I remember being given a plate with a chicken drumstick on it. I’m sure more was there, but I was tripping at the time. I thought that a kid was hiding on the floor next to my bed, and I gave the drumstick to him or her. Gotta keep your visitors fed, you know? Turns out, though, that I actually gave it to our dog, who survived … or maybe my brother or parents arrived in time to take away the bone.

I wasn’t aware of it, but my mother had been sleeping on the floor next to my bed when I was at my sickest. I didn’t learn this until years later, and I was pretty surprised. My mother is not, even on the best of days, a floor sleeper. Learning that she willingly put herself at my bedside for days at a time made me really understand just how sick I was.

At about this time, my parents wanted me to be examined again but were, I suppose, leery of exposing me to the cold. A nice little doctor with glasses and an actual bulgy leather doctor’s bag came to our house and into my bedroom to examine me. He confirmed that, yes, I was a really sick kid. He issued the edict that if I didn’t begin drinking fluids the next day, he would admit me to the hospital.

This conversation must have happened in my room or in the hall, because the message of drink or go to the hospital must have made it through my fevered thoughts and into the still-working part of my brain. That night, I dreamed I was bundled up in blankets as I sat in the middle of an empty movie theater. Someone handed me a cup of chipped ice and said that I had to eat/drink all of it or I would be taken to the hospital. So, little by little, I consumed it all.

From that point on I was on the mend. I had been sick and in bed for a full week. It took me a further week to be back on my feet. My mother did her best trying to keep my occupied in a way that would take minimal physical effort. I suppose that the threat of a relapse must have been in the back of her mind.

My claim to fame is that mine was the first case of rocky mountain spotted fever in the state of Delaware. I felt pretty special once I no longer felt like roadkill.

My “specialness” lasted for less than a year. The following summer, two of my friends developed rocky mountain spotted fever, too, although neither of them was as sick as I was, thankfully.

These days it’s all about the deer tick and Lyme disease, and rightly so. If it’s not caught in time, it can take a terrible toll. Fortunately, caught in time, Lyme disease is easily treated.

I was fortunate that the right treatment for rocky mountain spotted fever was determined about 20 years before I became ill. I was also fortunate that my physician correctly diagnosed and treated me and that my parents provided me with such good care.

I don’t have a phobia about ticks, although I suppose I’d be well within my rights to have one. I haven’t seen a dog tick in years, even though we have dogs and our neighborhood is loaded with squirrels, raccoons, and groundhogs. I suppose we’re just lucky.

On the other hand, the mosquitoes around here are plentiful, voracious, and l-o-v-e me. I’ve set a bounty on their heads: five cents for each head. Exterminate with extreme prejudice.

If you’d like to read more about rocky mountain spotted fever, here is a good article. http://www.medicinenet.com/rocky_mountain_spotted_fever/article.htm