Melissa Dunphy

It's the stuff of nightmares. Well, my nightmares. An hour ago in rehearsal, I was stroking my arm (weird habit during reading rehearsals), when my fingers brushed over something that felt like a piece of grit.

I brushed a little harder, but it didn't fall off.

I looked down. Was it a flea? It was about the size of a small flea. I grabbed it quickly between two fingernails, and was surprised to find I had to pull it out of my skin with a little "pop." I brought it close to my face to take a good look.



That right there is a deer tick, and the one I pulled out of my arm was the first I've seen in person. I am pretty sure he's a boy, and I am naming him Barry. I had the presence of mind to hold onto Barry after making sure he was dead, and I stuck him on the back of a price label peeled off a water bottle until I could secure him properly between strips of plastic during a suitable break in rehearsal.

Luckily for me (not so much for him), my good friend Clark has been going through Lyme disease hell for a couple of months, which has been very educational (and heartbreaking, but he's getting better). Following his instructions, on Monday I'm going to a Lyme literate doctor for a course of doxycycline, because I just called my usual doctor's office; they don't seem to have a clue, and it doesn't sound like it would be easy to convince them of the benefits of getting one. I also found a lab in Jersey who will test a tick for Lyme for $60 (again, after being told by my regular doctor's office that there was no way to test a tick for Lyme). I am sending Barry away to the lab today. I won't miss him, but I hope he gets there safely.

I hope I'm being overly cautious. The last thing I need is Lyme disease. Though, oddly enough, I kind of enjoyed the burst of activity this scare has brought; it's better than the self-pitying drunken moping I've been indulging in lately, or the bouts of constructive self-harm.

(Constructive self-harm is when you, for instance, work on your house with your hands so hard and for such long stretches that it still hurts to type twenty-four hours later. But the house! I made such progress!)

I really need that "illness" tag, don't I?

Labels: health

Last week, I learned that if I am juuuust stressed enough, I get some crazy digestion problems which involve having no appetite, throwing up half my meals when I force myself to eat, and getting reflux after eating the other half. I've never had that happen before, so I suppose I was more stressed than I've ever been. It certainly felt so. Alternatively, I'm old and don't deal with stress as well as I used to.

I should probably have a tag 'illness' for this blog, because it seems a good proportion of my posts are about medical problems; I recall a stretch a couple of years ago when I mostly discussed the terrorism committed by my urinary tract, which the rest of my body views with Republican-like paranoia to this day. I can't bring myself to create the label, however, because I already feel I'm turning into an old woman.

On the phone this week, my mother informed me matter-of-factly that I am now middle-aged, since I might as well be thirty.

She also received my new headshot in the mail, and her only comment? "You're getting old."
"But do you like the picture?" I pressed, offended hysteria rising like the bile in my acid-etched esophagus.
"Weeell, I guess you look pretty, but you're old. There are so many lines around your eyes. I took it to the tenant in the front flat, and he said, 'She's aging. It's natural.'"

I sent her a spiteful e-mail afterward asking (sarcastically) if she would send me money for plastic surgery so I don't disappoint her in future photographs. I guess I should call her to kiss and make up sometime tonight.

The headshot in question can currently be viewed on my Facebook and MySpace profiles, in case you're curious.

*The irony is that my heartburn is caused by affairs of the heart -- and neither of these ailments has anything to do with the cardiac organ. Suck it, Alanis Morrisette.

Labels: health, love, photos