"Once your tick(s) have been processed, the tick can not be returned to you" -from the IGENEX labs mail-in tick form.
My tick will arrive at IGENEX this morning, to be tested for Lyme and all possible co-infections. In my appointment with Dr. Marty Ross yesterday, he said it was good I took quick action on that, and good I took my left over Biaxin (Clarithromycin) right after I removed the tick.
(If any of this is confusing, read the previous post.)
I am now taking doxycycline, because it should prevent Lyme and also Erlichia and Anaplasma, which the tick (or my tick, in IGENEX's view) may well have given me.
Dr. Ross also asked how swollen my tick was. This was something that in my dumbfounded state I hadn't considered, but once Dr. Ross asked, I realized my tick was not engorged at all. It was as flat as, well, a tick.
From that, Sherlock Holmes, at least, would deduce the tick hadn't been biting me for long. Good.
Sherlock might also deduce the disgusting critter might have actually crawled onto me while I was swing dancing, or while I was in the car coming home from swing dancing. Two days before, my father had driven the car to a place in Maryland where there are ticks. (This is a place I do not go, primarily because there are ticks.)
At any rate, the absolutely most likely scenario is this tick hopped onto a nice, warm mammal in exurban Maryland or Virginia, and that cozy mammal hopped onto fossil-fuel transportation into the city, where the tick decided to explore a bit, and then, maybe dizzy from swing dancing, it took refuge in my armpit. And now it's won a free, one-way trip to California and an inside view of IGENEX labs.
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