Tick, tock, TICK, tock, it's Lyme disease!

It was a Thursday night and Tyler came home from being gone all day for school, studying, Elder's Quorum meetings, and keeping score at a basketball game on campus.  He walked in and said "I think I'm coming down with the flu."  I thought it was odd being the time of year it was, but not unheard of, and, for how busy Tyler was with everything, logical. However, for those of you who know Tyler, this is a very rare occurrence.  He rarely gets sick, especially with something as drastic as the flu!  He had the chills and a fever, and a terrible headache.  He went to bed early that night. 
The next day he went in to take a nap (another even more rare occurrence!), and then another nap on Saturday and another one on Sunday! (At this point I was blown away that neither me or the girls had caught this "flu" bug he had!)  He still had a bad headache and when he woke up he asked me if he had a bite on his side.  I checked and, sure enough, he had a huge bite about the size of a dime surrounded by a big red circle about the size of a golfball surrounded by another not quite as distinct rashy circle the size of a CD.  He said it was tender and itchy.

We kept an eye on it for a few hours, and that night it had turned into a very obvious bullseye.  I looked at a million websites and we had it narrowed down to a tick bite.  We were pretty sure.

The next morning it was even bigger and more red.  He waited until Monday afternoon and went in to a clinic and they "diagnosed" it as Lyme disease.  It's a bacterial infection that gets into your joints, nervous system and eventually organs. By the quotation marks I mean they never really test for it, because it's usually negative until it's too late to take care of it easily, and after you've taken the antibiotics it's usually gone and shows up negative again.  So they started him on a heavy duty antibiotic that he's taking for 3 weeks.  Within about 3 days the rash was gone and he was back to his normal self.  I read a "statistic" (I'm a skeptic when it comes to most statistics) that only 2% of people that get bit by ticks actually develop Lyme disease.  Due to my panic attack, I kept us inside for several days after that!  He ended up developing little mini rashes all over his torso and legs in the days after beginning the antibiotics.  It was his body kicking it into high gear trying to kill off the infection.  You can see a few of the rashes in the picture above.  Those went away and he is now back to normal!

We figured he probably got it from when we went camping a few weeks ago.  He wasn't able to shower for a few days while he was gone and therefore the tick was probably lodged in his side long enough to get the bacteria into his bloodstream.   He's so covered in freckles too, if he had gotten bit anywhere else it would be hard to check for them!

I know a lot of you had commented that everyone you've known that has had Lyme disease has had it really bad.  Moral of the story, get it checked as early as you can!  He got lucky and actually developed the bullseye, where some people don't, so we knew to go in!