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Removing the tick required a level of manual precision that my shaking hands were ill-prepared to provide. As I used tweezers to grasp the head, ensuring I didn’t leave any mouthparts behind, every horror story I had ever consumed about vector-borne illnesses played on a relentless loop in my mind. The “chilling” stories of people whose lives were derailed by undiagnosed fevers and chronic fatigue became my mental soundtrack. Once the creature was finally detached, I followed the clinical protocols I had read about in moments of less intense stress: I washed the bite area with antiseptic, trapped the specimen in a glass jar for potential testing, and attempted to project a sense of “compassionate realism” for my dog, who watched the ordeal with a confused, tilting head.
The days that followed were characterized by a strange, bifurcated existence. On the surface, I maintained the veneer of normal life—attending meetings, running errands, and engaging in the “many” routine tasks of a Wednesday in March. Beneath that surface, however, I was living in a state of silent, detective-like dread. I became an obsessive chronicler of my own skin, memorizing every freckle, vein, and line surrounding the bite site. I checked for the tell-tale “bullseye” rash every few hours, waiting for a signal from my body that the invasion had been successful. Every minor ache, every slight chill, and every fleeting headache was scrutinized as a potential symptom of an impending conflagration. It was a “rehearsal for disaster” played out on the stage of my own nervous system.
