Are you on this map?  Or this one?  

Then wear your tick repellant. And scrutinize your skin for ticks every time you wander in the wilderness—or in your back yard.

Lyme disease comes from ticks that live on deer. It was named for Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first discovered. We’ve always had our own herd of deer, commuting through our yard, fertilizing the lawn and eating everything. This year, however, Lyme disease hit Ithaca, NY, and I immediately got it. I’m an avid, if amateur, gardener, so I had lots of opportunities.

I never saw a tick on me. I didn’t get the nice bulls-eye rash.  So it took three feverish weeks, two trips to the emergency room, and two days in the hospital before the physicians could figure it out and give me doxycycline. Then I spent a week being so tired that walking to the kitchen seemed like a day's work.

My physicians are not dummies: Lyme disease is hard to diagnose because the symptoms mimic lots of other diseases. Fever, aches, generalized rash--one of my doctors said that medical schools give these symptoms to students so that they'll do endless research.

Oh, and if the physicians don't figure it out, and the symptoms go away, they are likely to come back as heart or neurological problems--although this diagnosis is controversial, so you'll be in even more trouble trying to get treatment.

I now have a can of tick repellant, and plan to tuck my pants into my socks and button my shirt to the ears. I also plan to check for ticks often, just like my dad used to do when I was a kid running around in the woods and fields.  He may have used a magnifying glass—the little suckers can be as small as the periods in this article.

I lost five weeks of summer 2011. Fair warning!

For more, check out the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, or the many blogs by Lymed folks.