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A tick
Edit for whole story:
Didn't even notice the bite, but about 2 weeks after a hiking trip, I noticed a red rash on the side of my lower leg.
I waited for it to go away on its own but it didn't.
It grew into a 10 inch by 5 inch bright red patch that itched, felt like rice paper and hurt to the touch.
The edge around it turned a different color every day.
So one morning, my girlfriend at the time had enough and basically forced me to seek medical help.
Problem was, it was a Sunday, and the doctors in my area were currently on strike.
So I rode the bus to the hospital, and had a bit of a surreal experience there.
(I was running a high fever by now, so my recollection is to be taken with a grain of salt)
I distinctly remember walking into the emergency room of the hospital through the entrance for ambulances, cause all other doors were closed.
At some point I was standing in a back room of sorts, no other patients around, and 3 doctors who were on strike curiously looked at my leg.
They assessed that it's definitely a burn wound. I vehemently disagreed.
So one of them wrote a prescription for a wide-band antibiotic, based on guessing.
I went to the nearest emergency pharmacy, collected the meds, took them and 3 days later the rash was gone and the skin began to heal.
Horror story time:
As a child, my cousin liked to play in a small, wooded area close to his garden and one day, a long time ago, he must have had a tick. He didn't notice it, nobody noticed anything strange and years (10+ years) later he got problems with rheumatic attacks and arthritis. Doctors were stumped as an adolescent shouldn't present with this. They checked genetic factors which were negative and treated the symptoms. It got worse and worse over the years, many visits to many doctors and specialists, they all had no idea what the cause of his problems were.
2 years ago (he is 38 now), he got a new knee joint and this year, he had to get a hip replacement because the arthritis. On a whim, a doctor did some tests and found that he has long-term Lyme borreliosis, likely from a tick, but never presented with the more common symptoms and had an unusually long onset time for the long-term effects of the untreated disease.
All of his problems could have been prevented with a few doses of antibiotics.
Well?! Gonna just leave us hanging?
edited my comment