i wrote about it as it was happening before i realized it was happening.
This is more or less how I developed viral encephalitis
So after spending all night up stressing over the quality of my work, I neglected to find out if the newspaper even ran my photos from “The Ride Of Silence.” Plus I am pretty sure that I wrote my phone number down incorrectly on the contact sheet I filled out. I also found out I missed a chance to be on the front page of the newspaper by taking “ride you bike to work day” off from work.
Actually last week kept me pretty busy. The latter part of my week was spent out at lake McMurty riding the mountain bike trails and testing out snack foods for work. Me and one of my co-workers spent several days out riding the trails, jumping creeks and bouncing off trees so we could report our findings to the trail committee. Honestly the effort kicked my ass. I remember standing in the shop on Saturday thing to myself, ” my left leg hurts and my right leg in numb.” When my co-worker walks up and ask me if I am riding, I responded, “of course.”
During the course of our trips out to the lake I have pulled upwards 15 ticks off of my legs. To make matter worse, when I unlaced my shoes I found about 6 ticks on the tongue underneath the laces. Needless to say I just left those shoes outside.
So late last month I gave serious mountain biking a few tries before deciding it really wasn’t for me. While out on each excursion one of the things i had to contend with was the massive tick population in Ok. I didn’t think much of it because we don;t have aggressive ticks in Alabama. Anyway a few weeks later I developed a rash but it went away in a few days. Then on Saturday I had to leave work early because my knee really hurt. I got home iced my knee and pretty much passed out there. When I woke up later on that night I felt like hell. I had an insane headache it hurt to move my eyes, and a fever that was quickly ramping up. I figured it was just the flu or something and that I would try to sleep it off. Sunday passed and I still had a fever, Sarah told me she was afraid I was going to burn her.
Monday came and my fever broke that morning after near overdosing myself on Aspirin. We went to an unrelated doctors appointment I had, and then headed back home. On the way home she was speaking with her mom who told her that if my fever was above 103 to take me to the hospital. We stopped got thermometer and proceeded to check myself. I got pissed because it read 104. So I went and wasted nearly 3 hours in a clinic for “We don’t know whats wrong with you, it might be ticks take these pills pay the nurse out front, if it gets worse don’t come back to us. go strait to the emergency room.”
And the pills are the best part, you have to take them on an empty stomach or you will throw up, if you eat any dairy product while on them you get severe diarrhea, and they make me too dizzy to ride my bike, not that I had a lot of that planned but it would be nice.