Poison Ivy, Lyme, a Mosquito, and a Really Good Time
This is my second summer in New England since moving away to go to college, and last week, feeling ready, I had taken on poison ivy. My friend’s lawn was overrun with that shiny-leaved stuff, and she worried about it, about it spreading, about getting another bad case of it like she did a few years ago. I went to the garden store and bought gloves that went up to my elbows. I wore jeans and a long-sleeve shirt and shoes and socks.
I pulled those suckers OUT.
Four days later, I was in urgent care because I was too itchy to fall asleep. My arms, my chest, my ankles, even my face! Itchy, itchy, itchy. While I was there, I had them look at the bulls eye that had formed on my shoulder, so I got bloodwork done for Lyme even though I’d never found a tick on me.
I live on the edge of a forest, and I have a dog. In other words, I live in Tick City. I’m lucky I’m not one big bulls eye. I’ve never had Lyme, and I was scared of it because I thought it was something you had forever and that could really take you down. After day three of antibiotics, I am no longer sleeping all day long and my arm that was so mysteriously sore as if a truck had driven over it, feels great.
I can do this New England thing.
Last night I was lying in bed, meditating with the Nerva app (I’m trying to hypnotize my guts into living in vacation mode) in the dark before I fell asleep. I have found the mixture of steroids for poison ivy and antibiotics for Lyme to be really fun. I either run around and vacuum and have happy thoughts or I pass out and have no thoughts. I fluctuate between these two states of being during the day, and then, at night, I become like a human flashlight, lit up by healing and the anticipation of how great it will be to go to Starbucks in the morning and get my espresso. I love Starbucks not because I think their coffee is so great, but because every day I go in with Bird, and as he licks the floor clean, no one points to the “service dogs only” on the door.
Maybe licking the floor is considered a service.
There I was in the dark, and then that drill-from-hell, high whine a mosquito makes started to happen. I have no problem with needles, but I hate getting stung by a mosquito. The thing about needles is that when you go to the doctor’s office I assume they use clean needles that have never been stuck in someone else. I don’t have that same confidence with a mosquito’s nasty stinger. I don’t know where that thing has been, and I don’t want it in me.
My remedy was to slam a pillow from arm’s length against my face every time I heard the mosquito come close. This turned out to be a lot of fun. I was still able to meditate (or at least the person kept talking and the time kept passing), and somewhere after smash #6 or #7, the whining stopped. I wiped at my face and eventually fell asleep.
The humidity is another issue. That’s been creeping in after an amazingly cool and light summer. Bird and I don’t know what to do with sticky heat. We just look at each other and pant.
