Today’s post comes from littlejailbird.

As some of you know, I recently spent a few days in the hospital. It took over a week after my release to start feeling somewhat normal.

The cause of all this was a couple tick bites. Such a small insect to cause so much illness. So much hinged on some small ifs. If I had stuck to the path…if I had put on tick repellent…if I had checked for ticks immediately….I would probably be now blissfully unaware of the fact that I had dodged a bullet. But I did none of those things and when the symptoms started, I kept thinking it was a one-day bug (pun intended)…then a two-day bug, then a three-day bug, and then I finally remembered that I had found a couple ticks on my leg several days before and that I better check if I had Lyme disease or something.

A trip to Urgent Care, then to the E.R., then admission to the hospital. I was hooked up to an I.V., both to battle my dehydration and to get antibiotics (three kinds!) into me. I was very sick. Along with other symptoms, my white blood and platelet counts were so low that the doctors were very concerned. I had lots of blood drawn for various tests. It was the weekend and the lab that could give some answers about tick-borne illnesses was not in-house – which meant the results would be slower to be received than the tests for other things.

Finally, on Tuesday, the lab came through with an answer: Erlichiosis. A tick-borne illness that, the doctor informed me, was worse than Lyme disease, but totally curable with the right medicine. Once I started the medicine, and once my white blood counts went up slightly, I was released from the hospital to complete my cure at home, but with weekly lab work to monitor my white blood and platelet counts and at least two follow-up doctor appointments.

And why did I go off the beaten path in the woods of Duluth? To take some pictures, of course. I don’t know if the pictures were worth all the suffering I experienced, but I’ll let you be the judge of whether they were worth shooting disregarding the subsequent suffering.

Tell us about a small act or a small omission of yours that had significant consequences.