Guess who’s back? Back again?
TICKS ARE BACK, TELL A FRIEND!!!
No, seriously! You should stop what you’re doing right now and educate yourself on the seriousness about Tick Borne Illnesses and once you’re finished, tell a friend, anyone you know!! I’m not trying to make lightness in any way by adding a little “Slim Shady/Eminem” twist, these little ticks are serious and can be deadly if the correct antibiotic (Doxycycline) is not given within 5 days.
Many of these diseases are often being treated as something other than these diseases listed (there are many more but these are just some to name a few): Lyme Disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Anaplasmosis, Ehrilichiosis, Babesiosis, Tularemia, Bartonella
Here are some of the many symptoms that come with the diseases (there are many more):
Extremely high fever
Fatigue
Stomach ache
Vommiting
Rash
Muscle aches
Chills
Shooting pains
Bulls-eye: Lyme Disease
Lethargic
Confusion
Chills
Nausea
Cough
Lack of appetite
Doctors are so quick to tell patients how “rare” some of these diseases are. What is ACTUALLY rare here is being diagnosed CORRECTLY, being prescribed the CORRECT ANTIBIOTIC within the timeframe needed in order to prevent prolonging their symptoms, or causing them to become fatal. THAT, my friends is what is ACTUALLY RARE and THAT is a HUGE PROBLEM and needs fixed ASAP & that’s all there is to it!
Let’s see how long that takes…
The world will flood, freeze over, and burn before that ever happens, maybe I’m wrong. I strongly believe that as long as the doctors are still getting paid, they would rather choose to keep sending you home, keep giving you the wrong antibiotics, and keep you guessing what the hell is wrong.
That’s exactly what happened to my sweet Kenley Boo, I know for a 100% fact she isn’t the only one this has happened to, but they sure do want us to think it is. She hasn’t been the only one to get misdiagnosed, the wrong antibiotics, the guessing game as far as not knowing what was wrong with her. They were completely clueless, but they’ve got their medical degrees, they must know everything, right? They went to school and studied for years on end, put in all of that time and effort, surely they’d never be wrong. We put SOOO much of our trust into the hands of doctors and many of them get far too much credit for not even doing their jobs correctly.
This may not be the greatest analogy, but I’m going to roll with it anyways. Let’s say you have a vehicle and you decide to fill your gas tank up with something other than gas. Let’s take a full bottle of windex and fill your gas tank up with it and try to drive it. Pretty sure you’re not going to get very far and more than likely, it wouldn’t run the same, or just completely shut down. That’s the same for a human being!! You cannot treat a human for something that they don’t have, you cannot give them the wrong antibiotic(s) and expect them to fully function afterwards, because in most cases (like my angel baby Kenley) that will not happen. It especially will not happen if the wrong antibiotics were given before the window of time is up.
Some of the misdiagnosis for these diseases are:
Fibromyalgia
Lupus
Scarlett Fever
Autism
Heart Disease
Thyroid Disease
Schizophrenia
Bi-polar
Chronic Fatigue
Inflammatory bowel
Multiple Sclerosis
And many many more!
—————————
I want to share a text I received from a dear friend at the beginning of this week. Monica Kirby is by far one of the sweetest, most kindhearted people I know on this earth, there’s probably not a mean bone in her body. We became good friends after working together at Amazon, she used to talk to me all the time when I was pregnant at work, waddling my pregnant belly through the building. I couldn’t try to hide my prego belly even if I wanted to, Kenley Boo wanted to be seen.
Fast forward to last year, right after Kenley passed away, both Monica and her sister, Nichol Kirby both did interviews with our local news on behalf of our family. Fast forward to this past Sunday into Monday, the texts I received from Monica.
She had texted me on Sunday, but I was already sleeping, so I didn’t read it until I woke up the following morning. I explained to her that I fell asleep early the night before, I loved her and to keep me updated. Her nephew ended up not having any symptoms, but with a tick attached to his scalp like that, along with knowing what happened to my Kenley, they didn’t take any chances. Not saying I took a chance with Kenley, because I didn’t. I had no idea she had even been bitten (just like the several doctors that “treated” her), a tick was never found on my sweet baby. Ironically enough, this was the first tick bite of the season that Riley Children’s Hospital has seen this year. My mind is still blown at the irony of that. Her nephew of all people, almost a year later that Kenley passed away, and they interviewed about Kenley Boo. So so ironic!
Below is one of Nichol’s (Nikki) posts involving her son Emerson and taking him to Riley the other day:
While at the park yesterday, Aileah and I were having a race to see who could swing the highest. Right next to us, I noticed a lady swinging with her son on her lap, but I didn’t think anything of it. Aileah decided to move to the jungle gym part when I heard “Oh! The ground is lava, maybe for 5 year olds!” I noticed her green and blue matching shoes, her son had the exact same ones (still didn’t think anything of it except for it being cute.) the lady ended up coming up and saying, “Kayla!? Nikki!” It was Nikki! I wouldn’t have notice her, had she not come up to me, not with her short hair and sunglasses on. I had just texted Monica right before that, checking in with her after Emerson going to Riley. When we were about to leave, both Aileah and Emerson decided to go down the big white slide that loops around in circles. Nikki decided to record a video of them and later during the evening, Monica sent it saying, “Oh my God! Watch the video! There is a bluish orb following them! We know it’s you angel!”
The other day, while at the library, I received a phone call from one of my good friends. She kept calling me and since I was in the library, I texted her and told her that I couldn’t talk because I can only really hear when it’s on speaker phone. She texted back saying her son was in Riley Hospital, that he had a spinal fracture and was going in for surgery soon. I texted back Immediately telling her I was calling her, signed out of the computer, grabbed all of my things, and headed for Riley. I could feel my anxiety levels begin to skyrocket as I made my way through the interstate, my mind went blank as I’m weaving in and out of lanes trying to concentrate. I had to do it for my friend, I had to be there for her. I could tell she had been crying after hearing the news of the accident, now to have her son laying in a hospital bed. I know that helpless feeling, but I had to be there to comfort her. I was fine when I parked the car, even fine walking into the building, I was actually proud of myself for not breaking down. Then the flashbacks came, seeing those green elevator doors, the tile perfectly placed in each one. The flashbacks of not being able to breathe those four days we were in the hospital with our sweet Kenley rushed over me. The thought of Emily holding me as I was having a panic attack, hearing the words “There is no hope, we’re sorry your daughter’s brain is leaking into her spine. There is no hope, we’re sorry your daughter’s brain is leaking into her spine.” I felt like I was on some kind of drug, it played back and forth as I held my breath going up to the floor my friend and her son were on. I finally found her room as the doctor was standing there, speaking so softly as my friend’s son was resting. She explained the procedure, the surgery, recovery and everything they entailed. She looked over to me before she exited the room and said, “I’m so sorry to hear about you daughter, that’s really brave of you to come here and support your friend.” I looked over at Samantha while her eyes and mine both filled up with tears as we hugged each other.
My friend Erica ended up calling me and it was a much needed distraction. I needed that. As much as I wanted to be there for Samantha right then, I did not want to upset or worry her more than she was, so I stayed on the phone with Erica for a little more. Once I got off the phone, I looked at Savian, and the same waves of emotions rushed over me as I looked at him and back at the monitor above him. I took a deep breath in and let it out. Samantha told me she had so many emotions running through her and I knew exactly what she meant. She didn’t know if she was hungry, tired, had to use the bathroom… The stress and anxiety of not knowing, she didn’t know if her son would make it through surgery, anything could happen. I told her that “You should find comfort in knowing exactly what is wrong with him. We didn’t know what was wrong with Kenley, the doctors had no idea until she was gone!” I felt good going to see her and her son that day, but man was it hard with all of the flashbacks that came aboard.
I learned shortly after talking to my dear friend, after finding comfort that her nephew was okay… That same day, another one of my friends, Lex told me that she was diagnosed with Lyme Disease after going camping over the weekend!! My mind was blown!! As a kid, I remember going camping for years in a row and never once did we worry about ticks, bugs really (maybe mosquitos which are just as deadly). I still have yet to see an actual tick, not saying I’d ever want to, but I haven’t seen one while being outside/inside, anywhere. Apparently times have changed, I’m starting to sound like I’ve lived a million years now, but it hasn’t been that long that I was camping as a teenager, barefoot without a care in the world.
I learned too that a family member of mine, someone that they knew very well and dated was also diagnosed with Lyme Disease. It’s all too close for comfort and honestly, people think things like this would never happen to them, but they are so wrong.
Anything can happen on any given day, we all know that, or at least we should. Your life can change so fast without you realizing it. You could have a perfectly healthy baby girl and seemingly as if out of nowhere become deathly sick. When Kenley developed her high fever of 103.8 that wouldn’t break once I gave her Tylenol Pain & Fever Reducer, as her mommy, I knew something was wrong. My baby didn’t get fevers like that.. You could take your baby girl to the hospital, listen to the doctors think she has the chicken pox because of her rash, witness them take your baby into another room so they could stick a catheter in her to take a urine test. She was beyond traumatized after that. You could listen to them tell you what she had was “just a virus.” So you administer the antibiotic as instructed by the doctor, only to have your baby still sick. You could decide to have a second opinion, so you take her to a second hospital, only to be diagnosed with Scarlett Fever and Strep, so you rotate the antibiotics for that, along with the one given by the first hospital, as instructed by the doctors… Only to have her STILL sick. You could take your baby to yet a THIRD hospital after witnessing her little body try to get up and make it to the bathroom to use the potty. Her tiny, 2 1/2 year old body was so weak from the disease, she physically had no energy to get up and go to the bathroom on her own. I had to carry her like a newborn baby, hold her little head up in her car seat on the way to the hospital because she had no control, she was completely lethargic. No one witnessed her eyes rolling in the back of her head as we made our way to the third and final destination. That is an image I have somewhat blocked, but I still will never forget it.
When we walked into the building, we were seen right away. On the scale to be weighed, she had no physical strength to stand up, she had to lay down in order to be weighed. Her vitals were checked, and right then, the nurse said “We need her a room now, she doesn’t look right.” Immediately, she was brought into ICU where an army of about 20 nurses/doctors were on her, hooking her up to machines, tubes, taking her blood, checking her vitals, inserted a breathing tube. It was so much at once, so much to witness and I lost it. I broke down and the doctor told me “She is in the best place she can be.” Although that may have been true, I never expected to leave the hospital without her. In her bag, I did pack some pull-ups, some for the simple fact that she couldn’t go to the bathroom on her own because of how weak she was. She was fully potty-trained, but the state she was in, threw everything off with her. Her balance, her appetite, everything. The only thing that remained the same was the fact that she still wanted me when she was able to still speak. Her beautiful bright blonde-white hair also remained the same, that would never change. One of the first tests the doctors wanted to do on Kenley was a CT scan, because they were concerned about her brain activity. After having my own mother look me in my eyes and tell me “She could be brain dead and it would be your fault, you didn’t get her here on time.” I stood there dumbfounded, not believing what I just had heard. In no way, shape or form did I neglect my precious child, at any point in time of her life. Not once, not ever. I loved that sweet little baby girl more than life itself. She was my whole world, she still is and I will always love her.
You never truly realize how precious life is until the most precious thing you have in life is taken from you. It can all happen so fast.
