Just In The Tick Of Whine

Sweet Gummi Mary! You'll never believe what happened to me Thursday morning!

Okay. You'll probably believe it. Might have already guessed it. And you also likely realize that by morning, I mean noon-fifteen.

I was preparing to get in the shower. I'd already turned on the water to warm up. I reached down to scratch my knee-back, where I'd removed a tick last week. It's still a little itchy. On the way to my knee-back, my hand brushed across a back portion of thigh, and I felt something.

Huh. Was this a scab? It felt raised. A bit rougher than surrounding skin. Not really itchy. I pulled the skin around and contorted my neck to get a look. Huh. That was awfully dark brown to be a scab. I tried to wiggle it. Nope. Didn't wiggle. Surely that wasn't a tick...

Whatever it was, I was NOT going to leave it there, all somewhat ticklike, attached to my flesh! I couldn't get a good grip with my fingernails. I ended up scraping it until it came off. All in one piece. Dark brown. About three times the size of any tick I saw last week. Which made it slightly larger than a pin-head.

Dang it! I didn't have my glasses. I could not tell, no matter how much I squinted at that spot, now resting on a single square of toilet paper, if it had legs. I'm pretty sure it was a tick. I don't have random dark brown scabby spots that come off. There had been a tick six inches away from that spot last week. So I'm calling it a tick.

I flushed that possible parasite, and felt my leg. Still didn't itch, but the rough spot was gone. My hand came away coated with blood! In fact, a look in that vicinity showed a river of blood coursing down the knee-back, approaching the calf. I dabbed at it with toilet paper, which came away soaked with blood.

If only I'd had a ziplock bag handy, I could have filled it and slapped a label on there (I'm A+) and shipped it off to the Red Cross!

What in the NOT-HEAVEN! You'd think I was on that demon Xarelto again, unable to clot! I stepped into the shower, and when the water hit that spot, even more blood cascaded down my leg, and swirled into the drain. I had nothing handy in the shower to use as a tourniquet. I was hoping I didn't exsanguinate until I was at least respectably dressed in my town clothes.

When I was done showering, I stepped out and applied a 3-square swatch of toilet paper to the area. Huh. The faintest of red dots appeared. Looks like clotting had occurred. This fits in with my tick hypothesis, as they have an anticoagulant in their saliva.

Looks like I will live to be bitten another day...