He contracted Lyme Disease.
getting prepared for the sale means I've sorely neglected posting here.
the last several weeks have been - I guess you could say interesting. and this gets to be a really long story and I guess that's why I've been putting off writing about it. (and so it begins)
about a month ago Timothy came to me and mentioned that he had a spot on the back of his thigh that looked like a bug bite but it was really big.
does it itch? does it hurt? no. I only really feel it if I push against it.
hmmm, weird. well we have spiders that will eat us all night long until we find them and kill them, but typically those bites will itch and hurt. but I still thought that it might be a spider. the spot was feverish like a bite. so we tried different medicines gobbed onto a gauze pad and taped on to keep it there all the time. we did this for several days and I didn't see any change. being that Timothy is 13, it feels weird pulling your pants down for your mom so I didn't bother him much about it, just asked how's your leg? for the next few days I'd ask and he would say 'it's fine' so I just let it go. then one night before bed I just asked quick while he was passing by me. so he rolled his eyes and showed me his leg. it had spread from being just under 3" across and 2" tall to being more like 5" tall and 10" wide. it wrapped half way around his leg and I was speechless.
the next morning we took him to the doctor and he said cellulitis and to take these antibiotics. okay. he took a permanent marker and drew around the outline of the area so when we went to his regular doctor to follow up in a few days she would know if the medicine was working or not.
we were just about to leave when the doctor stopped us and said 'I think we're going to test for Lyme Disease. it probably isn't but lets just make sure"
we waited for a few days and I hadn't heard anything back from the clinic about the results and thought if it was serious they would call right away. so I wasn't even going to make a follow up appointment. most of the time things are great and I just spent $150 to hear that everything is fine and I already knew that. Timothy has been very diligent about taking his prescription and three more days had gone by and I told him that I wanted to see how that spot was after 4 days worth of antibiotics. it had grown another half inch outside of the marker line! at this point I'm still thinking cellulitis and that's bad if it is allowed to get bad. but the truth was much scarier.
I instantly called and set an appointment for the next day with his regular pediatrician. she checked that spot and we chatted for a while about when we discovered it, what we had done for it, the visit to urgent care the weekend before. she checked for the test results and they had JUST gotten back from the lab.
she looked at the full screen for other tick related diseases (stuff I've never heard of) and they all came back negative and that was great. then she checked the Lyme test and she said "Oh!"
I guess they are seeing fewer cases of Lyme so it really did come as a surprise, plus the fact that Timothy hasn't had any other or shown any other symptoms of the disease. (apart from being tired, which he's 13. with a 13 year old, are they sick or are they just growing again? so I didn't think anything more of it)
so our kid has Lyme Disease. we literally caught it within 2 weeks and that is the best case scenario because he hasn't had it long enough for that bacteria to cause heart problems or any other long term issues. he has a new prescription of antibiotics that is more aggressive with Lyme Disease and so it should be all cleared out of his system when we retest for it in another week or two.
we will then need to wait about a week for the results again, but I feel confident that he will be fine then. we caught it so early and he hasn't been sick and that has been enough for me to not freak out about this.
on a side note... when they took his weight and height, he was 5'9.8" tall! this kid isn't even 14 yet. he's taller than everyone in this house. he passed me a long time ago and I told him now no one is going to believe that I'm his mother (5'4" and shrinking)
when we get the results back I'll come back and chat about that.
