I ‘signed off’ in July with travel planned across Europe, Norway first port of call, then UK. Venice then beckoned in early September to celebrate my wife’s birthday and an early 30th wedding anniversary. But the best laid plans…
We celebrated my birthday, mid July, in style in a ‘cabin’ on the edge of a fjord north east of Bergen with friends and their two young daughters. Our grown up daughter came along on the trip escaping her personal tragedy of a four-year romance that floundered.
Our friends took us up onto the mountainside above the fjord to collect chantarelle mushrooms and blueberries. We took a picnic and sat in the sunshine in a clearing high above the fjord watching and listening to eagles circling their nest, anxious that we did not come too close to their young.
We had a great meal that night on the fruits of our labours supplemented by a salmon that Finn had caught earlier in the year.
Next morning I woke early in a strange bed and crept outside. I took Finn’s fishing rod from the back porch and tried my luck off the bank at the back of the cabin. Two hours later to my complete astonishment I landed my first ever fish, a quite respectable 800gm Pollack. My delight quite shot away when Finn told me that it usually only took ten minutes to catch a decent fish!
We took the bus back to Bergen, my wife, daughter, Pollock and me. Our daughter was returning to UK the next day, my wife and I were staying on for a few days.
Our wanderings around Bergen took us to Griegs house and Ole Bull’s island and the Stave church rebuilt just outside of Bergen. One evening, friends phoned and invited us for a barbecue on the island of Astoy opposite Bergen. It was there that my wife broke her wrist slipping as she tried to take a swim.
It was a severe break and we were fortunate in receiving excellent medical attention. Our insurance company arranged for our immediate return to UK, the Norwegian doctors fearful that an operation may be required. As it turned out, they did an excellent initial job. Unfortunately, the broken wrist was the least of our problems.
Up on the mountainside during our chantarelle expedition, a tick bit my wife; a tiny little tick no bigger than a pinhead that left a mark like a mosquito bite. We both thought no more of it thinking it was simply a mosquito bite, at the time the broken wrist was our major concern. Some three weeks later, her back, arms and shoulders started showing signs of lesions or various size but distinguished by a red area with a white centre, a bit like a bulls eye target. She had been very tired and run down, headaches, aching joints, flu-like symptoms. We had put all of this down to the after effects of broken wrist until the lesions appeared.
Her regular doctor had no idea what was causing the problem and simply prescribed paracetamol. We decided there was something amiss and started to research her symptoms on the internet. We found websites with photographs bearing a striking resemblance to the lesions and describing a condition known as Lyme Disease.
We called the doctor’s surgery again and to our good fortune the duty doctor, a young man not afraid to listen to patients, agreed that Lyme Disease may be the culprit. Further research indicated Lyme Disease in the region of Norway we had visited.
Lyme Disease is extremely rare, less than 100 reported cases a year, most in north-eastern USA and Norway. It is extremely difficult to diagnose as it rarely shows on blood tests. In fact, the only known way to prove Lyme Disease is to grow a culture of the patients blood over a period of weeks to generate sufficient antibodies to prove the existence. By that time, the damage is done; long-term damage leads to severe arthritis, liver failure and cardio-vascular problems.
We were lucky, not every infected person has the lesions. It can take up to 30 days to incubate, by which time most people forget the original bite. The effects of the disease do not become apparent for several years and are irreversible.
A strong course of antibiotics is the prescribed treatment for the early stages of the disease. The downside is that the tick loses its head when it bites the victim. The head burrows into the tissue and lives a separate live infecting the ‘host’, when the antibiotics kill the parasitic infection it releases powerful toxins which are debilitating in the extreme leading to total and complete exhaustion, temporary memory loss, migraine type headaches and in at least two cases, the patient has died. We received a very severe warning of the consequences of pursuing the treatment and the long-term risk of doing nothing.
In the end, we elected for the antibiotics, 4.500mg per day for the first seven days and 1500mg for the next six weeks. These are very strong doses in the order of magnitude that a vet would prescribe for a horse. It has been successful as far as anyone can tell. The blood culture test has confirmed the disease and by luck, (and the internet) more than anything else, we have pulled through this crisis.
The plaster came off the wrist three weeks ago; physiotherapy is getting the stiffness out of the joint. In the last week, my wife has been able to resume an almost normal life, prior to the last few days she spent 70% of her time in bed, too exhausted to do anything.
Our Venice trip was cancelled. The insurance company is being particularly bloody minded about it as we cannot even now prove my wife was unfit to travel, Lyme Disease does not fit their definition of an incapacity to travel. In fact, it does not even appear on their schedule of illnesses.
In some ways this has been a disastrous summer, but it has given us the time to reflect and decide upon the important things in life and caused us to focus more deeply on the strengths and joy that we share.
We celebrated my birthday, mid July, in style in a ‘cabin’ on the edge of a fjord north east of Bergen with friends and their two young daughters. Our grown up daughter came along on the trip escaping her personal tragedy of a four-year romance that floundered.
Our friends took us up onto the mountainside above the fjord to collect chantarelle mushrooms and blueberries. We took a picnic and sat in the sunshine in a clearing high above the fjord watching and listening to eagles circling their nest, anxious that we did not come too close to their young.
We had a great meal that night on the fruits of our labours supplemented by a salmon that Finn had caught earlier in the year.
Next morning I woke early in a strange bed and crept outside. I took Finn’s fishing rod from the back porch and tried my luck off the bank at the back of the cabin. Two hours later to my complete astonishment I landed my first ever fish, a quite respectable 800gm Pollack. My delight quite shot away when Finn told me that it usually only took ten minutes to catch a decent fish!
We took the bus back to Bergen, my wife, daughter, Pollock and me. Our daughter was returning to UK the next day, my wife and I were staying on for a few days.
Our wanderings around Bergen took us to Griegs house and Ole Bull’s island and the Stave church rebuilt just outside of Bergen. One evening, friends phoned and invited us for a barbecue on the island of Astoy opposite Bergen. It was there that my wife broke her wrist slipping as she tried to take a swim.
It was a severe break and we were fortunate in receiving excellent medical attention. Our insurance company arranged for our immediate return to UK, the Norwegian doctors fearful that an operation may be required. As it turned out, they did an excellent initial job. Unfortunately, the broken wrist was the least of our problems.
Up on the mountainside during our chantarelle expedition, a tick bit my wife; a tiny little tick no bigger than a pinhead that left a mark like a mosquito bite. We both thought no more of it thinking it was simply a mosquito bite, at the time the broken wrist was our major concern. Some three weeks later, her back, arms and shoulders started showing signs of lesions or various size but distinguished by a red area with a white centre, a bit like a bulls eye target. She had been very tired and run down, headaches, aching joints, flu-like symptoms. We had put all of this down to the after effects of broken wrist until the lesions appeared.
Her regular doctor had no idea what was causing the problem and simply prescribed paracetamol. We decided there was something amiss and started to research her symptoms on the internet. We found websites with photographs bearing a striking resemblance to the lesions and describing a condition known as Lyme Disease.
We called the doctor’s surgery again and to our good fortune the duty doctor, a young man not afraid to listen to patients, agreed that Lyme Disease may be the culprit. Further research indicated Lyme Disease in the region of Norway we had visited.
Lyme Disease is extremely rare, less than 100 reported cases a year, most in north-eastern USA and Norway. It is extremely difficult to diagnose as it rarely shows on blood tests. In fact, the only known way to prove Lyme Disease is to grow a culture of the patients blood over a period of weeks to generate sufficient antibodies to prove the existence. By that time, the damage is done; long-term damage leads to severe arthritis, liver failure and cardio-vascular problems.
We were lucky, not every infected person has the lesions. It can take up to 30 days to incubate, by which time most people forget the original bite. The effects of the disease do not become apparent for several years and are irreversible.
A strong course of antibiotics is the prescribed treatment for the early stages of the disease. The downside is that the tick loses its head when it bites the victim. The head burrows into the tissue and lives a separate live infecting the ‘host’, when the antibiotics kill the parasitic infection it releases powerful toxins which are debilitating in the extreme leading to total and complete exhaustion, temporary memory loss, migraine type headaches and in at least two cases, the patient has died. We received a very severe warning of the consequences of pursuing the treatment and the long-term risk of doing nothing.
In the end, we elected for the antibiotics, 4.500mg per day for the first seven days and 1500mg for the next six weeks. These are very strong doses in the order of magnitude that a vet would prescribe for a horse. It has been successful as far as anyone can tell. The blood culture test has confirmed the disease and by luck, (and the internet) more than anything else, we have pulled through this crisis.
The plaster came off the wrist three weeks ago; physiotherapy is getting the stiffness out of the joint. In the last week, my wife has been able to resume an almost normal life, prior to the last few days she spent 70% of her time in bed, too exhausted to do anything.
Our Venice trip was cancelled. The insurance company is being particularly bloody minded about it as we cannot even now prove my wife was unfit to travel, Lyme Disease does not fit their definition of an incapacity to travel. In fact, it does not even appear on their schedule of illnesses.
In some ways this has been a disastrous summer, but it has given us the time to reflect and decide upon the important things in life and caused us to focus more deeply on the strengths and joy that we share.
