LYME DISEASE

Gideon went to Scout Camp in June and came back with a deer tick as a little extra on his leg. We removed it and watched the site to see if any kind of rash developed. Over the next several weeks, we saw nothing at all, kind of forgot about it, except for the fact that Gideon complained of joint pain off and on all of July. That's unusual for him, but he's in a big growth spurt right now so we chalked it up to that.
Fast forward to this past Wednesday, when Gideon came into the office after his shower to show me his other leg, which had a big 5 inch circular rash ring! And another one on his right ankle. Neither of them were at the site of the tick bite, but I made a dr appt right away and took him in.
Yep, he has Lyme Disease. The dr said it wouldn't have been from the Scout Camp tick bite as that was too far back to have left these particular rash circles, so we guessed he got bit again when he was at a campfire program at his scoutmaster's house a couple of weeks ago. But the internet and a different dr said no, the rings can appear up to 30 days after the bite took place. Now the joint pain is explained, and also the throwing up/flu symptoms he had one day a couple of weeks back.
Gideon will be fine; he is on antibiotics for 30 days and that's that. Luckily we caught it early! Only about 1/2 - 2/3 of Lyme Disease sufferers get the ring rash symptom, so for the rest, diagnosis can be harder from what I've heard.
So it pays to know the symptoms and signs of Lyme Disease, especially if you live in Pennsylvania.
For those who don't know, here is a list of some of them:
Joint Pain
Red Circular Rash
Fatigue
Headache

And for a fuller list (and to read more about Lyme Disease), CLICK HERE to visit the CDC's info page.