Rash Decisions
9/16/21
Hello everyone:
This week’s writing – my first dive into the heart of the Anthropocene, human population – has been upended by a tick and its treatment. I simply haven’t had the time or energy I need for the writing this week. My apologies to everyone, especially new subscribers. I plan on being back next week in proper form.
In lieu of that delayed essay, I’m offering a quick tick story here and then a short list of curated Anthropocene links for you to explore.
Our island retreat a few weeks ago came with a single bite of a deer tick nymph, attached for about 24 hours. I’d been bushwhacking across the island in shorts, so the problem was self-inflicted. I put the ridiculously tiny thing in a jar and, once home, sent it off to be tested. Here she is with, if I’m not mistaken, a chunk of my flesh in her little jaws.
Poor thing just wanted to grow up and raise a family, I know.
Research suggested that given the relatively short attachment time I had a 20% chance of developing Lyme if the tick was a carrier. It was. I wasn’t showing symptoms but decided to ask my doctor’s office for a course of doxycycline just in case. At first reluctant because they sensibly prefer only to prescribe the antibiotic when symptoms are evident, they relented when I explained that I was equally reluctant to take it but wanted it on hand in case symptoms appeared on a weekend. I also wanted, if I didn’t use it now, to have it in the first aid kit for longer backcountry trips.
Several days later – about two weeks after the bite – a few odd, hard-to-pin-down symptoms seemed to manifest, though in all honesty I knew they could have been merely part of the cascade of bodily insults that arrive in one’s fifties. Still, knowing plenty of people whose entire lives have been turned upside down by Lyme, I did some risk assessment, some listing of pros and cons, and decided to begin a two-week course of the doxycycline along with twice-daily high-quality probiotics as a countermeasure to the nuking of my body.
One evening a week later, I was oddly exhausted, achy, and itchy. A bright red rash appeared like lichens on my chest and back, but disappeared by morning. The next night, the same thing, perhaps a bit worse. On the third night things accelerated, with the rash spreading like flames through California and, in the wee hours, a very odd and uncomfortable swelling of my tongue and throat.
Thinking anaphylaxis was nigh, Heather and I headed off at 3:30 a.m. to the ER where I was patted on the head by kind but unimpressed medical personnel. They took good care of me, injected me with some prednisone and Benadryl (and prescribed some more), let me sleep a bit, explained that anaphylaxis happens in moments or minutes rather than hours, told me to abandon the antibiotic, and then sent me on my way. My rash and swollen throat had mostly gone away. But the rash returned and a general malaise persists. Two nights later, I still feel like three of the seven dwarfs: tired, itchy, and grumpy.
I had known by the second night that my symptoms were consistent with an allergic reaction to the doxycycline, but had never been allergic to it (or any other medication) before. Neither I nor the ER doctor have an explanation for that part of the story. In retrospect, I should have assumed that the rash was an allergy to treat with some Benadryl, and stopped the doxycycline. But the spectre of Lyme was lurking behind a decision not to finish the course of antibiotics, and anyway the first couple nights were merely an annoyance, albeit an annoyance that made it difficult to get much writing done.
All of which is to say that an essay on nearly eight billion humans has been delayed by a single millimeter-long tick carrying a disease spreading quickly in a warming world. Which sounds like an Anthropocene story to me.
So, that’s far too much about me. Moving on, here are some links to dive into if the spirit moves you. If nothing else, I recommend you think about tuning in to #3.
The rapid spread of deer ticks and Lyme: Many articles about the rise of Lyme disease suggest the rapid spread of deer ticks in recent decades is due to several Anthropocene reasons: 1) The shift in agriculture from small, local farms to massive agribusinesses has meant that most eastern farmland reverted back to forest, which ticks prefer to open fields, and where the mammals (deer, white-footed mice, etc.) that fuel the tick’s lifecycle thrive; 2) Suburbanization has pushed homes into those forests filled with ticks; 3) Restrictions on hunting deer in those closely packed suburban woods, along with the near-absence of predators of other tick-carrying mammals, has ensured a healthy population for ticks to rely upon; and, of course, 4) Climate change has extended the season and northern territory for cold-sensitive ticks, and accelerated their growth rate. Here are two decent articles on the topic, one from Vox and one from The Conversation.
Antibiotic resistance in the environment: For an in-depth primer on the terrifying growth of antibiotic resistance in the environment, you’ll do well to start with the “Toolbox” created by ReAct, an independent and international group of antibiotic resistance researchers funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
A conversation about trees by great writers: I want to highly recommend that you tune in this Saturday afternoon to a conversation about trees between Robert Macfarlane (Underland) and Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass), and David Haskell (The Songs of Trees). The occasion is the recent publication by Orion magazine of Old Growth, a collection of first-rate essays and poems on the lives of trees. As Kimmerer writes, “This book is an arboretum of essays, not showcasing ‘trees’ as a class of beings, but rather stories of interspecies relationships of an arboreal kind, as diverse in scope as trees are in leaf.” This event is hosted by Orion, The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, and Yale Environmental Humanities.
More info here. Register here.
The impact of climate change on public health: A public health op-ed simultaneously published recently in more than 200 medical and health journals, titled “Call for emergency action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity, and protect health,” explicitly ties climate change and ecosystem decline to a decline in public health. Here’s a sample:
“The risks to health of increases above 1·5°C are now well established. Indeed, no temperature rise is “safe”. In the past 20 years, heat-related mortality among people older than 65 years has increased by more than 50%. Higher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality. Harms disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including children, older populations, ethnic minorities, poorer communities, and those with underlying health problems.”
The environmental insanity of Bitcoin: Here’s an excellent New York Times explainer article on the ridiculous, perfectly-Anthropocene logic of Bitcoin, a digital currency designed to waste energy, and which now uses seven times more energy than all of Google’s global operations:
“Though Bitcoin mining might not involve pickaxes and hard hats, it’s not a purely digital abstraction, either: It is connected to the physical world of fossil fuels, power grids and emissions, and to the climate crisis we’re in today. What was imagined as a forward-thinking digital currency has already had real-world ramifications, and those continue to mount.”
That’s all for this week, folks. Thanks for sticking with me. Be well, and check yourself for ticks…