Lyme: Not a Pretty Picture

The first symptoms occurred Sunday evening when I returned home from working a 12 hour shift; overwhelming fatigue.  I wrote it off to lack of sufficient sleep but by Monday morning the symptoms had only worsened.  Planning to pick and can green beans, I found it hard to do with overall body pain particularly in the pelvic region and knees.  Struggling through the morning I hit the end when I felt as if I was going to pass out while filling jars at our kitchen sink.  My dear wife picked up where I left off as I went to check my temperature; 101F.  I spent the remainder of the day in bed except for what time it took to put the canners on and take them off.

Tuesday with the fever hanging between 101 and 102 I only found energy to put one load of beans on the camp stove which we use to keep the heat and humidity outside.  Once again the overall body pain was high particularly when I would first stand up.  Thinking that I had a bout of the summer flu I was still toughing it out waiting for the fever to break.

Wednesday dawned hot and humid with me in as much misery as before.  My temperature remained unchanged and we decided that I had waited long enough; a trip to the doctor was in order.  For some unknown reason my temp had dropped below 100 by the time of my appointment and after going over my symptoms they didn't feel that I had given them much to go on.  It was decided that I must have some type of viral infection going on so was told to take Ibuprofen for the flu-like symptoms and wait for the fever to break and follow up with a panel of blood test in the morning.  After taking the 600mg of Ibuprofen I felt somewhat better; well enough to go ahead and finished two more canning batches.  By evening the fever was back with a vengeance hitting and holding 103 all through the night.

With the fever still holding 103 degrees Thursday and the blood panel showing nothing significant a call to the doctor got me a prescription for amoxicillin in case of a secondary bacterial infection and I took my first dose that afternoon.

Friday morning things finally took a turn for the better when my fever broke around 4:00am leaving me drenched in sweat.  By 6am though still sweating profusely I felt good enough to take a short drive about the countryside as told in yesterday's post.  By the afternoon I felt I would be well enough to return to work today and was in plant by the 3am start of shift; still sweating, temp low (96.5) but feeling much much better.  As Saturday morning wore on I felt more and more of my strength returning and by 10am my temp had stabilized and sweating ceased.

Upon arriving home this evening, as I changed from my work clothes my wife gasp "dear God" and pointed at the rear of my lower leg.  She recognized it immediately and so did I as I looked to where she was pointing; the Lyme rash!  As we looked back over the events of the week she was sure that if it had been present earlier it certainly had to have been much smaller and not nearly so inflamed or she would have noticed it.

Fortunately in an attempt to head off a secondary bacterial infection the doctor had prescribed the exact treatment I needed for this serious infection that had kept me bedridden for most of the week!

Come Monday I will be back in contact with the doctor to see where we go from here but for now, thank God, I'm off to a good start.