Tick talk

An interesting day yesterday.  I am not sure whether to feel good or bad about it all.  On Tuesday, I scratched an itch that turned out to be a tick.  I asked Mike to take it off because I could not even see it.  It was attached to me just on my waistline on the right side of my back.  Even with a mirror I could not see it, let alone remove it.  Mike put nail polish remover on it and pulled slow and steady with a tweezer...exactly what the online instructions said to do...and when the tick came off, the head of it remained embedded under my skin.  Mike dug at it with a needle, but it was so deep under my skin that he could not remove the tiny splinter that remained.  I put ichthymol on it (In Louisiana they called it 'drawing' ointment.) hoping that, like a splinter, the head of the tick would surface so Mike could remove it.  That didn't work, all that happened was that the area under the bandaid turned red.  Mike called the doctor.

Mike is still walking with crutches and unable to put much weight on his leg since his surgery in early March, but he seemed to want to get out of the house on such a beautiful sunshiny day.  He said he felt very good and he drove the car, no problem!  Our doctor is in Malvern, some 20 miles from here, the seat of our Hot Springs County.  It was not so bad.  Our doctor is in with a group, and Mike had talked to his nurse who, because our doctor was busy, set us up with a medical assistant who worked at that group.  We had to leave immediately because the appointment was about 45 minutes from when Mike called.  There was a bit of a wait to see the doctor, but it was not so bad.  The Medical practicioner who took care of me used a set of tiny tweezers and said she had to dig deep, but she managed to get the rest of the tick out...and said that I really would not need to worry, but that just in case I should have a blood test to be sure there was no trace of Lyme Disease.  She started me on a weeklong regimen of a tetracycline and said that if Lyme Disease should happen to show up in my blood they would call me and increase the prescription for a 2nd week and that should take care of any problem I might have with any bacterial infection from the tick. The drawing of the blood was not wonderful, but it was not so bad.  Mike said that the simplest thing to do with the tetracycline prescription would be to have it phoned in to the Walmart store there in Malvern so we could stop to pick it up on our trip home.

An American Dog Tick...Arkansas is a little south of where these are prevalent.

At the Walmart store, when I went to the pharmacy, the prescription had not yet been received.  Mike was using one of those electric wheelchair baskets to get around inside the store and it was not so bad.  We did some other shopping and I went back to the pharmacy about fifteen minutes later and still no order from the doctor...so I left my phone number for them to call me when it was ready and said I would come back before I left the store if I had not yet heard from them.  As soon as I got back to where Mike was looking in electronics for a USB microphone for Mike2, I realized that I gave the pharmacy the wrong phone number and went back to give them the right number for the cell phone I was carrying on me...and the order from the Doctor was there.  It was not so bad.  The person I talked to said it'd take about 15 minutes to fill it.  Mike and I finished our shopping, and the fifteen minutes was up so he headed out to the car in his electric cart and I went back to the pharmacy.

I waited in line behind three people to be in front of the pickup desk in the pharmacy.  The lady behind the desk said that the prescription was not ready yet, but the check out lady said that the intake lady had asked to speak to me when I got back there.  Back to the end of the line at the intake desk, there were 3 people in front of me and when I finally talked to the lady behind the intake desk, she wanted to see my insurance card.  I showed my card and the lady brought my information up to date and informed me that my pills just needed to be counted out and I could pick up my prescription shortly.  Back to the end of the line at the pickup desk, there were five people in front of me.  And when I got to the front of the line the lady told me that there was not yet any prescription ready for me.  I waited.  And waited.  And waited...for nearly an hour, the entire time complaining loudly that my husband, waiting for me out in the hot car must think I had died...but there didn't seem to be any rush behind the pharmacy counter.  As a matter of fact, there were two other people waiting with me complaining loudly as well, one, a man who was worried about his sick wife in the car who needed the prescription so all he could do was wait there and see how long 'a few minutes' was, and a lady who said she had to be at work at four and that she really hoped her prescription would be ready 'in a few minutes' like they'd said.  None of us squeeky wheels seemed to hurry them up in the pharmacy though.  I stopped thinking that '...it's not so bad'.

I don't have any problems at other Walmart stores in Hot Springs or anywhere else, for that matter, but at the Walmart Store in Malvern I guess there is no competition or any reason for that store to make any attempt to win customers over.  It must be the only game in town.  That was not the first time I have spent a very long time waiting at the pharmacy counter in that same store.  That was not the first time I have been disappointed at the high prices on the merchandise in the aisles.  That was not the first time I'd been bewildered at that same store not having the merchandise I needed even though other Walmart stores do.  Every time I have gone into the Walmart store in Malvern I have said that I won't be back.  Matter of fact, I have lived here for four years and in all that time I think I have gone into the Malvern Walmart all of four times.  Maybe after this time I won't ever need to go back there again. 

I have started on my tetracycline regimen and am hoping that no other tiny little tick will cause me any more big problems!