For the second half of my week in the UK I’m staying with Martin Johnston in the New Forest. This is a very beautiful section of Hampshire, pretty much a wildlife refuge and recreation area. They have wild horses here, so it’s odd to be driving down the road past an athletic field (a cricket pitch, I was told) and to see the horses wandering through a parking lot.

They also have deer here, which brought up stories of the deer we have in Chatham and the deer ticks they bring.

I got my first tick bite of the season just before I left. I’m very careful this time of year, but obviously not careful enough. I was spraying Roundup on some weeds, and while I was on the tractor most of the time I did have to leave it occasionally and that’s when the tick must have jumped on me.

Ticks don’t bother me much – I just pull them off and go on. They usually leave a welt that itches horribly for awhile, kind of like a long-lived mosquito bite, and that’s it.

In North Carolina they are known to carry two diseases: Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme’s disease. While I’ve never met anyone who got Spotted Fever (it seems to be more common toward the mountains), I do know several people who have had, or thought they had, Lyme’s disease.

One of the sign’s of Lyme’s disease is a target-shaped rash around the bite that appears within ten days or so. You can imagine my surprise when yesterday I woke up and saw a textbook-perfect target rash around the bite I received before I left North Carolina.

Great.

Here I am in another country, being paid to work at a client site, and I have to go to the doctor.

This is the age of the internet, so I decided to take a picture of the rash and send it to my doctor back home. It was early in the morning, so I sent it and then called him using Skype and left a voicemail. A few hours later he called my SkypeIn number and left a message that I was to get to a pharmacy (chemist here in the UK) and get some antibiotics. Apparently Lyme’s disease is quite treatable early on, so it was important to get started on medication.

Well, doxycycline is not available over the counter in the UK, so I had to go to see a doctor. Being an enlightened country, they have public health care, but since the US is behind the curve on this (due mainly to greed in my opinion) I would have to pay for the consultation. They were able to see me that afternoon, and in fact insisted that I needed to be seen as soon as possible.

With directions in hand to St. Clement’s Surgery in Winchester, we headed of to the doctor (we being me and Bob Potter, my client). It was going to cost £60 for a consult, but I didn’t have any other options, and I am certain that St. Clement’s is out of the Blue Cross Blue Shield network.

I was seen promptly with a minimal amount of paperwork (pretty much name and address). Dr. Roberts was a very nice lady who was somewhat excited to see me. I took off my shirt and from six feet away she was able to say, “yes, that’s Lyme disease” . I should note that she had never seen it before, but perfectionist that I am the rash is darn near perfect.

The next words out of her mouth were to ask if it would be okay to bring in the medical student to see it. He was so excited that he asked if he could take some pictures. While he did this Dr. Roberts was on the phone, and then there followed two more doctors and the two triage nurses. I think in total I took my shirt off four times.

I didn’t mind. Since Winchester is close to New Forest where there are deer ticks and reported cases of Lyme’s, I figured it would be the right thing to do to let as many people as necessary see my rash so they might recognize it in the future.

Apparently my patience impressed the doctor, who waived the £60 consultation fee, saying I was the most interesting case she had had in months. I just thought it was funny that I was basically paid $100 to take my clothes off.

She prescribed doxycycline, the antibiotic that my physician and also recommended, and I was on my way.