Tick-related disease

N had a tick embedded in her back on Saturday evening - we had been visiting family and we saw it when we stopped for dinner. Luckily I keep a nail kit in the car and I had a pair of tweezers and alcohol pads. I pulled it out and rubbed her bite with an alcohol pad.

Fast-forward to yesterday. She said her legs were hurting. Not too terribly unusual since she often says they hurt- growing pains and such. Then today she wakes up and is really lethargic. Kept complaining about being cold (very unusual!!) Said her legs and back were hurting and she had a fever of almost 101. I remembered the stupid tick and called the dr. The nurse said, "It is URGENT that you get her in here right away". Unfortunately when I talked to her, N had just laid down for a nap, willingly, I might add (so I knew she was sick). So I woke her up and put her in the car. We headed to the dr, and after talking with him, he examined her and ruled out everything else, strep, ear infections, etc. He said we should treat her as if she has lyme disease/rocky mountain spotted fever/various other tick related diseases. The ironic thing is that a positive blood test for lymes, etc, won't usually show up until 5-7 days after symptom onset. We went ahead and drew blood to see if there was a positive for any of these, but if it comes back negative, it doesn't necessarily mean she didn't/doesn't have it. (make sense?)

Now, onto treatment. Antibiotics. There are two that are recommended for these, one is doxycycline (fairly common) and then another (I can't remember). Both have side effects. For children under 9 (90lb), doxy has the side effect of possibly turning the teeth gray, with a short course (7-10 days), it's very unlikely, but possible. The other has a side effect that 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 45,000 will have the bone marrow wiped from their body- it is fatal. Guess which med we're doing?

Overall she is doing better. She was so brave when they drew blood. She cried a little, but recovered quickly. She hasn't had any sort of appetite today, but she was rewarded with a huge cookie from the nurse and I took her to get her favorite burrito afterward, which she nibbled on.

Hopefully she'll be back to herself soon!! I hate these weird sicknesses!