Jaci Dawn

I had this plan: get all the unpleasant stuff done before July 1, 2011. Then I could just start 2011 all over at the half-way mark. It was a beautiful plan (and I still may do it).

Today I contacted the urologist and scheduled surgery to remove that 5mm kidney stone out of my body. It’s a day surgery (out-patient). June 23, High Noon.

(I love that song: Tex Ritter. Love that movie, too. Yay Gary Cooper! And Grace Kelly!)

Seriously: surgery is at noon.

That will be the last item on my hit list for the first six months of 2011.

The last item, so I thought.

There was this tick, you see. And a conversation. And a struggle with a tick remover tool, said tick, and a jar of rubbing alcohol. The tick remover and the rubbing alcohol won (although my husband said the amount I used was over-kill. I wanted the sucker VERY dead).

And life resumed as normal: Don was banned to the shower and his clothes went straight into the washing machine. After identifying the tick as a deer tick and making certain its head was intact on it’s pickled little body, I foolishly flushed it.

Foolishly because when I came home tonight, Don asked me to look at his elbow again. And this is what it looks like:

Damn.

He has opted to wait until tomorrow morning to go see a doctor. He won’t go to the ER for the tick bite. Right now, it is just swollen and stiff, no other symptoms. Everything I’ve read gives me the impression he can afford to wait but a number of my friends are urging me to over-rule him. Right. Like I have much chance of doing that.

If he gets flu-like symptoms between now and tomorrow morning, I’ll haul his behind to the ER. I’m really not trying to ignore the seriousness of the situation, but you can’t haul a full-grown adult male off to see a doctor without his express permission (or if he is too disabled to fight you).

Now, about that 2011 Do Over… Maybe I should start by bonking Don on the head and dragging him off to the ER? ;P