source: L’Olio (CC), Flickr

I said in Monday’s post (about the CDC changing its estimate of Lyme disease diagnoses in the US, raising it 10-fold from 30,000 new cases per year to 300,000) that there has been a run of recent news about other tickborne diseases. If you are someone who loves the outdoors — or even, you know, your back garden — it’s important to pay attention to such research, because these diseases are just becoming known and thus are often not recognized by physicians. Which means, of course, that someone who has the misfortune to contract one might be misdiagnosed, might be given antibiotics that won’t work against the organism, or might even be dismissed as malingering.

The most recent and saddest piece of news: Joseph Osumbe Elone, a 17-year-old high school student from Poughkeepsie, NY, died earlier this month from what is believed to have been an infection with Powassan virus, one of these lesser-known tickborne diseases. According to his family, he had been mildly ill for several weeks, with a cough but no striking symptoms, and collapsed and died Aug. 4.

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source: Cuatrok77 (CC), Flickr

Recently I visited a relative on the eastern end of Long Island, about 90 miles outside New York City. The heat was brutal, and the house had no air conditioning and wasn’t accommodating to breezes — so on the first night I arrived, I sat out on the deck as the sun sank and the air cooled. Just as it became too dim to see the far end of the garden, there was a thrashing noise, as though something had gotten caught in the hedge beyond the pool, and then a whffft as whatever had tangled itself sailed over the obstacle. A moment later, something spiny but soft-edged poked into the sliver of light from the window, and bobbed, and bowed toward the ground. The spiny bits were antlers; the intruders were two white-tailed bucks, at least a year old, come to munch on the unattended lawn.

Because I am a city kid, my first thought was, “Aww, that’s pretty.” And because I am me, my next one was: “I wonder what the Lyme disease situation is out here?”

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