Idaho, Utah and Tick Bites
Maddie and I took a roadtrip to Idaho and Utah
. We are taking one last vacation before my visa papers go in and I won't be able to leave the country for 6 months. My family has lots of things going on and we didn't want to miss out...and Steve wanted to work overtime, so it was the perfect time to leave!! We got to Idaho Falls to stay wth my sister Thursday and pick up my nephew, then headed to Utah to my parents early Friday morning. My brother's kids were also there for the night while they were on mini-treck. We had a blast! We saw the cute movie, "Marmaduke," ordered pizza and did some crafts. Saturday we took the kids to the arcade, laser tag and out to lunch. Maddie loves her cousins and always has so much fun when they get to see each other.

Maddie had been sick since the previous Sunday with a cough, fever, headache and runny nose. We figured it was just a cold and thought it would pass, but didn't and is the second time in the past few weeks that she had it. Weeks previous to this, she had been complaining that her legs were always aching and whenever she ran, she would have to stop and wasn't her normal high-energy self. She woke up for about 10 days before her cold with a headache and would have to lay on the couch and kept telling me her eyes wouldn't work (blurry) and that her neck was aching. Steve and I hadn't really thought too much about it, just that she might be getting sick, or maybe was having those aching growing pains, until she got this cold that wouldn't go away and also got what seemed to be pink eye right before we left that cleared itself up and only lasted a day and a half. All of this said, Steve texted me the day after we got to Utah and told me to go get her checked to see if maybe she had gotten lyme disease from the tick bite a few months earlier, that we had forgotten about. Since her couch was just getting more intense, her fever hasn't gone away for an entire week and she was starting to sound like her throat was getting swollen, I took her to the clinic. They thought she had strep, but the test was negative, so I asked about Lyme disease. I had gone online and read all about the symptoms and Maddie had most of them, including the aching muscles in her legs, the headaches, the flu symptoms, stiff neck, swollen glands, sore throat, blurry vision, fever, pink eye etc. The doctor didn't want to do a test because it would have cost me hundreds of dollars since we dont have American health insurance and she was pretty positive that Steve was right about Lyme disease. So, poor Maddie is now having to take weeks worth of antiobiotics to treat Lyme disease for a stupid tick bite she got two months ago. Thankfully Steve thought about it because if left untreated, she could have developed nerve damage, paralysis and possibly brain damage. We learned our lesson to get the next tick tested!! The worst part is, I had been worried about it for two weeks after the bite, but figured I was just being a paranoid mother and didn't just listen to my intuition that was telling me to get her tested.

Sunday night we headed back to Idaho so I could help my sister the next week by babysitting her kids and working in the office she works at (Ameriprise Financial) while they are out of town on business. I sit and answer the phone (which usually rings only 5 times a day), in an office alone where customers never stop in without appointments, eat out, bring Maddie and my niece, Tacie, who I am also babysitting, to work, play on the computer and GET PAID for it. What a sweet job.

Maddie entertaining Tacie at the office