I found the doctor’s approach infuriating.
I am sure they taught him this in med school — and he has delivered far worse news to others than he currently is delivering to me, so obviously he’s the pro. But I don’t want to be managed. I want to be told. And the fact that he is calling personally, that he has left voicemails at all three of my numbers, that he is speaking with great deliberation tells me what he is taking forever to say.
The test was positive.
But I had already guessed that.
I dragged the kids to Wal-Mart this morning, buying Mare’s costume for High School Musical, and some more short sleeved shirts for her to wear to camp. Picking out things for Linds’ baby shower. I made a show of how great it was to have Momma back, how wonderful it is that that bizarre little blip-on-the-screen virus thing was so well behind us. The kids skipped along the aisles. Sheesh, of course it’s hard to keep up, I said to myself. You’ve been in bed for two weeks. Plug along, it’ll feel better.
Funny how my head still hurt after two triple lattes. But, hey, at least they helped, and there are worse things to be prescribed.
And, you know, I’m tired because that weird heart-thing kept waking me up last night. I should exercise more. Heart palpitations must come to people who don’t exercise enough.
I am sure my face feels funny from all that lying down. My tongue isn’t really numb, I just haven’t eaten much, so things taste funny.
But it sure was oppressively hot in that Wal-Mart. Was the a/c broken or something? On my way to checkout, I picked up a digital thermometer, ripped open the package, crammed the metal tip into my mouth. A fun feature: it glows red when you have a fever.
Bright freaking call-out-the-cavalry red with flashing digits: 101.4!! 101.4!!!
So when I see on the voicemail that the doc has called, I know. I hadn’t gotten a test result in the hospital, so had asked the GP for a re-test Tuesday, to be super-sure. It was the only test we were waiting on.
“You have Lyme disease,” he finally says.
I am mindless with fear. Instantly, just like that, I want to crawl out of my own skin, run somewhere, change the storyline, backup, do something.
Son of a bitch whore on a cracker.
“I think we caught it really early,” he is saying. “The test was negative in the hospital. They re-ran your spinal fluid and the Lyme antibodies were not in there yet. So I really think you’re on top of it. This isn’t something where you’re suffering for months and no one finds it. When it’s caught early, the chances of full recovery are very high.”
I sit down, rest my elbows on my knees, head in my hands, breathe. In through my nose, out through my … holy shit. I hike my shorts hem up.
On my thigh, unmistakable. The bull’s-eye rash.
I have Lyme disease.
I thought the scariest thing was to be sick and not know what it was. But that carries an inherent hope: you don’t know, you’re equally likely to have good news as bad.
But then you know, and you Google, and there are associations for people with your disease. There are information boards and horror stories and petitions to Congress.
The numbness in your face is Bell’s Palsy. The pain radiating in your joints is the effect of a bacteria crawling around your central nervous system. The Chinese woman in the gothic condominium was an hallucination and if things keep going, you’re going to start suffering memory loss and declined cognitive function.
“I’m telling you,” the doctor is saying, “we’ve caught it early, and the course of treatment is simple: Doxycycline for three weeks. And it’ll be better. You’ll be okay.”
The first night on Doxycycline I’m sprawled on the bed, pillows under aching extremities. I have taken Percocet for the pain and fever, Phenergan for the nausea. A thunderstorm. The power goes out. The window a/c unit stops buzzing. I am alone in the hot dark, thinking about the bacteria running through my system, doing battle with the big blue pills I have swallowed to kill them.
I take my temp: 101.6!! 101.6!! Two more pills, some gulps of warm fizzy water. The girls shove open the door and throw themselves into bed beside me. I feel like I should break into “Raindrops on roses.” Instead I mutter, “Be good to each other. Snuggle each other. Sisters always make it better.” My tongue is so thick, I’m lisping.
The laptop battery is charged. I flip it open and cool blue fills the room. I read Amy Tan’s essay, pore over the Lyme Disease Association page. I obsess with guilt and fault — I was not cautious enough. The kids will be sick next. No one will want to visit me because they will be afraid that they will get Lyme in my back yard.
I never want to go outside again. The Swingset that Blocks out the Sun is in the middle of a warzone. Nothing is safe.
Thunder cracks over the house, a flash in the room, the faces of my sleeping babies. Another temp-check. The red flashes: 101.7!! 101.7!!!
The rain patter starts, and I wish myself soaring out into it, arms out to the water and the heavens, ecstasy in humanity and universe and wind. A flash and I am hit, fall to earth, split open with lightning, spyroketes spilling out of me. Sublime, gross humanity.
A long day in the cool of the bedroom. More Percocet, Phenergan, Doxycycline.
At 7 p.m. the fever breaks (a happy green 98.2! 98.2!) and I am hungry. I eat chicken and potatoes, and it tastes good and I ask Cute Husband to do a tick-check on the kids before he puts them to bed.
“The size of a poppyseed,” the doc had said. The period at the end of this sentence.
I sprayed, and I checked, and still it got me — that tiny little speck has palsied my face and left me in agony.
There’s a cute Gwyenth Paltrow movie on — about flight attendants. Cute Husband brings me a latte, and then I listen to him putting the girls to bed. I feel sad and scared. But I am sitting up, the latte is helping my head, and the movie really is cute.
My eyes are watering. I squeeze them shut. Bell’s Palsy is reversing a lifelong quirk: I’ve only ever been able to wink my left eye. Now it hangs dumbly open while the right one pinches obediently. I run to the bathroom and experiment with facial contortions in sick fascination. My left side is flaccid and unresponsive.
It is ironic that it is Lyme — I’ve been afraid of it for years. I have called the doctor twice in the last two months when I pulled ticks off the kids. I goop them up in bug spray, and I tick-check them every night.
I do it all because I believe it constitutes choice. But here I am anyway.
I can’t keep the kids inside forever, and even if I did, something could get them there, too. There’s just a certain amount of bad luck in every life.
The lack of choice always brings the rat of panic scampering through my brain, but then I think a bit. It is nice to be powerless. Less work. Less responsibility. I don’t have to know whether I will still have this in ten years. I just have to do the best I can with it today.
I will hope that the blue horse pills kill the buggies dead and that this episode is behind us without further fuss. Or maybe I will suffer with a constellation of symptoms for many years. Who can say?
Besides, some people think crooked smiles are sexy. Although, droopy eyes really aren’t. So let’s hope that one goes away.
