A Trip to Cape Cod and Lyme Disease

 A Trip to Cape Cod and Lyme Disease

 

    In August of 2007, my parents and I went to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We were having a fun time seeing the sites. One day we bought tickets to take the ferry over to Nantucket. After walking around for a while, my mom expressed her desire to see the gingerbread houses. It was around this time she brought to our attention that her leg was really bothering her. My father and I thought it looked like a mosquito bite that was nicked from being shaved. Other than being a little red, it didn’t seem to look that bad. My father wasn’t really up for the walk as he had been dealing with debilitating Fibromyalgia for years, and although he had been doing much better, all the walking was aggravating it. My mother still wanted to see the houses though. I was starting to feel ill and I didn’t want to disappoint her so I kept plugging along. Then it suddenly hit me, I forgot to take my morning pills since my morning routine had gotten disrupted. I thought that had to be why I felt so ill. When I realized this, I told my parents. A short while later, things were progressing. I was now feeling extremely sick. This could not be from missing my morning medicine. I could feel I had a high fever and my pulse seemed very fast. I had the chills and couldn’t get warm. I don’t recall if I had other symptoms. We decided we had to get back to the ferry right away. Unfortunately, we already purchased tickets for the ferry that took a bit longer to get to port. It would be a few hours before we could get back to the mainland. 

    When we got back to the room, I checked my blood pressure and it was quite elevated. I called the emergency transplant line, as it was a weekend. The pulmonologist on call listened to my symptoms and asked if I had ever had Lyme Disease. I told her that I did not. She called me back not too long after we hung up to tell me she looked through my yearly blood testing that I had done a few months back, and it showed positive antibodies for Lyme. I wondered why no one had told me that when I had the test done. I would find out many years later, after being bitten by a tic again, that there is no definitive test for Lyme. People often get false positives as well. The pulmonologist told us to go to the local hospital. My parents would pack up our belongings and we would end up going to a hospital not far from where we were staying. While I was being seen and evaluated in one part of the ER, my mother was in another section having her wound swabbed. They said it would take a few days to get the results back and she was given a script for antibiotics. I would be told that the hospital was a small, local hospital, not equipped to deal with complex cases such as mine, namely, people with lung transplants. The staff arranged for an ambulance to take me to the closest hospital which was a women’s hospital in Boston. My parents would drive separately to Boston and meet up with me in the ER. On the way, they went to a pharmacy to have my mother’s antibiotic prescription filled on. Somehow, they made it to the hospital with no GPS, while driving in the dark. My father opted to stay in the car and sleep while my mother accompanied me to the ER. 

    When we finally got to see a doctor, they told us that we would need to go back to NY to get the proper medical care, as they too were not able to handle my care. By this time, it was now the early hours of the next morning. Concerned about how tired we were, and knowing we had quite a drive ahead of us, they allowed my mother to sleep in a bed overnight so she could safely drive us to NY first thing in the morning. The next day we set out for NY. On the way to NY, we got hungry and stopped at one of my favorite pizza chains that we often frequented on our yearly trips to New Hampshire. When we got to NY, I was immediately taken to the transplant floor. My mother went down to the ER there to see about her wound but it ended up taking too long so she came back up to see my father and me. She then left with my father and went home. 

    The next day my mother had one of my sisters take her to a local ER where she was admitted and her wound re-swabbed. The culture came back positive for MRSA, grade 3. She would have a large chunk of tissue cut out from the area. It almost went to the bone. She would be shown how to clean and dress her wound and would visit the wound center, weekly, for 6-8 weeks to make sure the wound was properly healing. I don’t remember staying in the hospital very long. I was sent home on a course of oral Doxycycline. This medicine was new to me and I threw up on more than one occasion after taking it. Thankfully, it seems to have done its job as I got better and never had any other Lyme symptoms since.   

 

(Posing in front of a gingerbread house right before I told my mom I didn't feel well.)