The Cycle Path
Cycle Log
Day 23 - Sunday 11th July 2004
Epilogue
Sunday morning emerged from bed drenched in sweat with swollen legs and gently yellowing jaundice. Straight down to the on-call GP service to deliver the case history of tick bites and midge clusters...possibly Scotland's first case of malaria (?)... but maybe just something nasty from a deer tick. The symptoms don't quite fit Lyme's disease but they don't precisely fit Borrelia Relapsing Fever or any other of the more exotic stuff like Erlichia or Rickettsia or Brucellosis. Straight onto anti-biotics and blood tests to follow with chest X-rays to pick out the dry cough problem. The internet cites lots of scary tick bite information but does include most of the symptoms including the dry cough! The tick is just a vector for some pretty nifty spirochetes: short, quick and wiggly things that erupt into your body creating the fever and the rigors in an attempt to force you out to take on water...no doubt where more of their ticky mates are waiting in the bushes to suck in the next generation of wee beasties. Not only that but the spirochetes are biochemically clever and after the first dinner party in your bloodstream cloak themselves in a new protein shellsuit so that they will be invisible to your body's defence mechanisms. In such cases blood tests at the wrong time do not pick up the presence of diagnostic antibodies. Alien is on TV but make a positive decision not to watch it. One week on from finishing and the rigors have gone but the sweats still remain. Now the victim of Brucellosis jokes too... How do you tell someone with Brucellosis? "To see you... nice". I'm busy constructing my A to Z of Local Distinctiveness for Common Ground and wondering how to insert 'T is for Ticks' without causing too much alarm!
