In June of this year, I was savoring the warm weather in my yard, my happy place. A barely noticeable mark itched on the top of my left foot and, of course, I didn’t think much about it. That week, I noticed the bite area increasing and growing pink, and I began to feel nauseated and had the worst sinus headache that I had ever felt so, when Friday arrived with still no relief, I went to Urgent Care and showed them my foot.

The doctor put me at ease by saying that the bite didn’t look too bad to her. “I’ve seen way worse than this,” she told me, so I was on my way with an antibiotic. Great news! The antibiotic worked… until the following week when the bruising appeared to be coming back.

I called the Urgent Care center again about my dilemma and, reluctantly, the physician working there that day prescribed another seven days of the antibiotic. A few days into it, I felt like something was taking control of my nervous system. My left leg and arm began to feel weak with numbness and tingling, and my entire body tremored uncontrollably. I felt like I had a virus or anxiety, which I had never dealt with before. I stopped the antibiotic immediately and went to the Emergency Room.

“It’s definitely not the bite,” the doctor said. “The bite looks good.” They performed a CT scan of my brain and some blood work, all that came back negative, so they simply sent me home. That was last Saturday. Exactly one week later…

Yep, it’s me in the hospital. By this point, the bite mark had mostly disappeared but I had been to another urgent care center just two days prior for severe nerve pain in my neck and head. “A bite wouldn’t do that,” the doctor said. “It’s probably just a pinched nerve from a strained neck muscle.” This time, I entered the Emergency Room again, in tears from the unbearable pain I had been suffering with for a week, in addition to having awaken with Bell’s Palsy. Every day seemed to bring something new. That facial paralysis is what it took to finally get someone’s attention. I was admitted and given a spinal tap, blood work, urine test and an MRI. Finally, a wonderful neurologist gave me a diagnosis… Lyme’s disease, and from what? The bite on my foot. It took one month, four doctors, a lot of testing and a hospital stay. I should have stuck to my guns and insisted on that bite being the root of these issues. Every symptom I had seemed to lead back to it, but I trusted the medical advice I had been given. I praise the entire medical community. They save lives every single day, but this has definitely taught me that even the best professionals simply don’t know everything, so we always need to advocate for ourselves and our health… always. Before I was discharged from the hospital this morning, the neurologist said, “that Bell’s Palsy is what got our attention. If not for that, this could have easily not been figured out.” Since the first symptom, I always felt that the bite somehow had something to do with it. Now, I know it was. Be your best advocate.