The "Peoples' Pharmacy' on NPR had a guy this week who had a mysterious case of what turned out to be Lyme Disease. He was a hot shot doctor in Miami, where of course, there is no such thing. It was a riveting show. It took four years to have this thing diagnosed and he ended up having to get a heart transplant.
Everyone has mysterious symptoms from time to time, and mostly, they go away and we never think about them again, let alone have to get an organ transplant. But this program made me think about all the dangers from day to day living we face.
Most of the time my skin is pocked with ant bite blisters, spider bites, gardening nicks, bruises and scrapes, age spots from too much sun over the years, and I don't worry too much about them beyond getting an annual full body check from my dermatologist. But I do check myself every day for the ticks that may have taken up living somewhere on my skin. Usually they announce themselves with a sharp specific itching.
I have been assured by my health practitioner that we do not have Lyme ticks here in Florida. But I wonder if I have had any number of tick born diseases in my lifetime? I am outdoors every day, often in thick woods and knee deep grass, and I rarely use insect repellant or wear clothes that protect from insects.
We do keep tweezers in every room so that we can remove ticks when we get them. (It's a must to have a partner who can examine nether places one can't access.)
When we take a vacation to some urban area and stay for a week or so, all the spots on my skin disappear, the bottoms of my feet become pink and soft, not gnarly and gritty. I discover no new ticks or mysterious bites. I feel ready for being public.
I guess it's the big trade-off. I could live in a lovely and pristine urban condo, and I would not worry about getting Lyme and Chickemunga and Leptospyrosis and Jaws and Maws and other horrid diseases, real or imagined. But I decide to take the risks of being free roaming in the natural world of the pristine Florida Green Swamp. Maybe I have had all these diseases by now and I got over them and now have the immunities I need.
So, early mornings, I go out to check for tracks to see what's been there over night, and see what wildflowers are in bloom, if the barred owl is hunting in the creek, and look for swallow tailed kites and the crane families and the ibises gleaning in the wetland meadows. I have forgotten, once again, to apply the insect repellant. We have few mosquitoes because they are immediately eaten by myriad predators. I do not worry about West Nile Virus.
Maybe I will die of some insect born disease, or I will be bitten by a rattle snake or a black widow spider, or I could be attacked by an alligator though I doubt it. I tell our most timid visitors that for every snake you see, there are a hundred nearby that you don't. I love pointing out the hundreds of frogs at any given time one can see around our home. Many of them somehow find their way inside the house, so we have all become adept in frog catching. "O.K, guys, you have to go out side," I hear my spouse saying to the current group as he is brushing his teeth.
What is sheer paradise for me is terrifying to others. I am beginning to get that. So, mostly, I invite the kids into my world, and we seem to be on the same wavelength.
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