When Life Gives You Lymes...

...make Key Lyme Pie. Thanks for your clever advice, Craig. It was too good to pass up as a blog title, so I stole it. Yes, dear readers, I have Lyme Disease. At least I'd better, since I'm taking antibiotics for it. Oh the places I've been in the past week... I woke up Tuesday feeling Rather Odd, and upon finding a thermometer, I discovered I wasn't faking it! I had a temperature of over 100 -- an automatic stay-home-from-school-free pass! Woo! So, a nice, happy little fever, right? Well, no. It came and went, but it got as high as 104.4 (impressive, eh?), at which point my eyeballs felt like the fiery furnace, post Nebuchadnezzar's rage. Everything ached... for days. What was going on? Who gets random fevers suddenly? Evidently people with Lyme Disease do, but I didn't know at that point that I had it. So... I drank Many Liquids (I hope I learn to enjoy orange juice again) and watched tv for hour upon maddening hour, since I couldn't really do much else (such as move or think). The problem is, NOTHING is on during the day, except soap operas, Martha Stewart, and kids' shows. I did watch Mr. Rogers at one point, and was filled with happy memories from that golden era of children's programming. In this episode, I learned that real giants (such as the kind Daniel the Tiger was afraid he saw) are not real; they're just pretend. The objects of such fears are likely to turn out to be kind-hearted singing and dancing schoolteachers. So think of the lessons I would have missed had I not been sick... Andrea would still terrify me! Thank you, Land of Make-Believe!

ANYWAY, yes. I fulfilled my tv watching quota for the next 14.7 years. And I went to the doctor at one point, too. He asked, based on my address, if I was related to Grandpa (only he didn't call him that). Said to tell him he said hi. Good old Rhode Island. Of course, my fever was gone when I saw him (probably shivered it away during the 45 minutes I sat in the waiting room...), only to soar back to 103 that night. At the height of my malaise, my head and neck were so stiff and sore I could hardly move them. And my head felt like it was covered in bruises -- sore to the touch rather than muscle ache -- and my forehead felt numb. Isn't that weird? I think it's weird. Maybe the numbness has something to do with the large bowl of ice-water (emphasis on ice) that Andrea rigged up to allow me to remoisten my washcloth. Actually, I was just used to the past tense, but my head still kind of feels bruised and such. I'm not out of the woods yet. Wow, what an ironic statement, since it was the WOODS that got me into this mess in the first place! Stupid ticks on stupid deer. I probably got it while drawing in fields for hours. And now I look forward to an Everest of work for the same class! I'm not too panicky, though. It'll get done; it always does somehow... And if not, it's not the end of the world (if only it were that easy!).

So, now you are informed! I would appreciate continued prayers for healing; the antibiotics seem to be doing their thing, but I need to get a lot of strength back to do what needs to be done. And if anyone wants to volunteer to make me that Key Lyme pie, that would probably help things, too.