Roll up, roll up! Come and see the amazing tick man, cried the nurses
Now I know of the hundreds of thousands of people who read this column on a weekly basis, many do so because of its important educational content. So here is this week’s advice.
Don’t lie on a sand dune for too long.
The reason is because you might end up spending a night in A&E.
Let me set the scene… Driving home after a long day at work and, as it was sunny and there was nothing to go home to other than Mrs Canavan and two whining children, I phoned my wife and told her I’d be late because of a vital meeting. Then I pulled up at the beach we live close to and lay on a sand dune for half an hour or so, taking in the view and basically enjoying a short break from real life and responsibility.
I thought nothing else about it – until two days later when I itched my back and felt something round and hard. I looked down and saw an insect buried in my skin.
I did what any 45-year-old man in the same situation would’ve done and called my mother.
‘Mum, I’ve got an insect lodged in my back,’ I told her.
‘Can you call back later?’ she replied. ‘Homes Under The Hammer is on.’
‘Mum, I need your advice – can you pause it for a second?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean pause it?’ she said. ‘You can’t stop a television.’
‘Yes mum, you can. Remember I came round last week and spent an hour and 45 minutes showing you how to work your new TV, and we spent a long time on the bit where you press that little button on your remote and it pauses whatever you’re watching so you can go to the loo or answer the door and then come back to the telly and not have to miss anything again?’
‘Oh yes, that rings a bell,’ she replied uncertainly. ‘How do you do that again?’
This conversation went on for roughly 37 minutes before she finally managed to pause the television and I was able to tell her about my predicament.
‘A tick? In your skin? You’ve got to get this sorted immediately Steven,’ she instructed, before adding with her trademark calmness, ‘If you leave it you’re going to get Lyme disease and be in a wheelchair within weeks.’
Her reaction was worrying as, to be honest, I’d planned to leave it and see what happened. After all, it was quite an attractive tick and, as I grow older and have increasingly less of a social life and fewer friends, it felt nice to have someone who felt so strongly about me he wanted to actually live in me.
I felt my mother was overreacting, so called my aunty, a more rational being, but she said exactly the same.
This was a huge blow as, to give the story context, it was a Saturday night, Mrs Canavan was away and both children were at my mother-in-law’s. It was my first night of freedom in two years and I’d planned beers with pals. Instead I found myself heading to the walk-in centre.
They saw me pretty much immediately, mainly because I think they were quite excited by my injury. Indeed, once inside the doc’s room, a nurse came in and announced, ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just here to watch. I’ve never seen a tick before’. I began to feel slightly like a travelling freak show (‘Roll up, roll up. Come and look at Amazing Tick Man. Two pound fifty for a picture.’)
Using several worryingly sharp-looking implements, the doc quickly got most of it out but said there were still some bits in my back, which was dangerous. He then, addressing his assistant, used the words no man lay face down on a doctor’s couch wants to hear – ‘scalpel please’.
Next – without anaesthetic – he began cutting into my back, at which point I elevated around 12ft off the table and let out a shriek. ‘Did that sting?, he inquired. I felt like replying: ‘No, I just had an urge to jump clean off the table and yelp, doctor’. Instead I said: ‘Yes, it did a touch’.
He apologised and explained there was a tiny bit of the tick left in, but after more cutting and prodding confessed he couldn’t get it out and so, at just gone 8pm, I was dispatched to A&E.
I arrived just as it was filling up with an interesting assortment of Saturday night drunks and explained my ailment.
‘No problem,’ said the cheery receptionist. ‘Take a seat. Oh, and there’s a fivehour wait.’
I was hit with the thudding realisation my home for the evening was not going to be a lovely pub with roaring fire and fine ales, but here. I messaged my friends. Their sympathetic response was: ‘We’ll toast you as we sup our first pint. Now stop texting – we want to enjoy our night out’. It gave me a glimpse into how they’d react if I died.
Fortunately, a consultant saw me after a couple of hours and this time, mercifully, first put a needle into my back to numb the area. But even after half an hour of digging, she didn’t manage to get it all out and so prescribed a course of antibiotics to ensure I didn’t get an infection.
I phoned my mother to tell her. ‘Why on earth did you allow them to leave something in? You’re going to get Lyme disease,’ she exploded.
I was tired by this point and may have rather sharply replied: ‘What do you expect me to do mother? March back in the hospital and tell the doctors that in the opinion of a 75-year-old with no medical qualifications they haven’t done a good enough job?’
Anyway, the positive news is that a week on I have neither been struck down by a nasty disease nor lost the use of my legs. The annoying part is I had expected, given all the cutting, to have an enormous scar, allowing me to tell the story of how I got it at dinner parties. Instead all there is is a pin-prick, hugely disappointing.
So, there you go. The moral of this story is think twice about lying on a sand dune, especially if you have a night out with friends planned.
I think they were excited by my injury