The adorable and quirky Parker Posey has had her debut in This postponed by a case of lyme disease, according to Playwrights Horizons. The star of Best In Show, Waiting for Guffman and Scream 3 had to pull out when she was recently diagnosed with the disease of my nightmares, which a quick Google search tells me has the following symptoms:
- Rash. A small, red bump may appear within a few days to a month, often at the site of the tick bite — often in your groin, belt area or behind your knee. It may be warm to the touch and mildly tender. Over the next few days, the redness expands, forming a rash that may be as small as your fingertip or as large as 12 inches (30 centimeters) across. It often resembles a bull’s-eye, with a red ring surrounding a clear area and a red center. The rash, called erythema migrans, is one of the hallmarks of Lyme disease, affecting about 70 percent to 80 percent of infected people. If you’re allergic to tick saliva, redness may develop at the site of a tick bite. The redness usually fades within a week. This is not the same as erythema migrans, which tends to expand and get redder over time.
- Flu-like symptoms. A fever, chills, fatigue, body aches and a headache may accompany the rash.
- Migratory joint pain. If the infection is not treated, you may develop bouts of severe joint pain and swelling several weeks to months after you’re infected. Your knees are especially likely to be affected, but the pain can shift from one joint to another.
- Neurological problems. In some cases, inflammation of the membranes surrounding your brain (meningitis), temporary paralysis of one side of your face (Bell’s palsy), numbness or weakness in your limbs, and impaired muscle movement may occur weeks, months or even years after an untreated infection. Memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and changes in mood or sleep habits also can be symptoms of late-stage Lyme disease.
- Less common signs and symptoms. Some people may experience heart problems — such as an irregular heartbeat — several weeks after infection, but this rarely lasts more than a few days or weeks. Eye inflammation, hepatitis and severe fatigue are possible as well.
Uhhh, terrifying. While I’m sure Posey has the best treatment possible available to her, lyme disease freaks me out like rabies and bed bugs. Nature, man. Nature is totally fucked up.3
Lyme Disease is a nightmare. I have been out of work now for 2 1/2 years fighting this pain in the ass disease. It attacks your joints, your immune system, muscles, and most devastatingly your neurological system.
The bulls eye rash actually only shows up in less then 40% of the cases. Most often you will have a red bump, a little rash, or nothing at all.
Anytime you have been outside please check yourself head to toe. These little buggers like to hide in your groin and underarm area as it is dark and moist. They are the size of a pin head until engorged with blood so they are so hard to see.
It was always thought this was a CT/Long Island/Cape Cod infestation but there are people across the whole country that are coming down with this. The highest infection rates are in the New England area however at this time.
If you find a tick get to your doctor immediately and ask for at least a month of antibioitics. It sucks to put the crap into your system but it is truly the only thing that will kill them off. You need the month because that is the length of their growth cycle and if you go a shorter amount of time you can actually allow the spirocetes of the lyme to get stronger and harder to erraticate because they have built up an immunity to the antibiotics. The Lyme spiroceste looks just like a cork screw and while in your body actually borrows itself down into your tissues and organs.
Lyme is now the fastest growing infectious disease in america- three times the amount of all other combined. Sadly there is a lot of misguided and dated information out there regarding it. The old motto is “It’s hard to get and easy to get rid of” that is so far from the truth and now literally hundreds and thousands of us are sick and dying from these damn little ticks!
Whew, sorry for my novellete. This is a serious disease and we all need to bring awarness to how wide spread it is.
There is an amazing movie out right now called “Under Our Skin” it is in select theatres right now and is outstanding, if you have the oppertunity please do see it!
That’s a lot of great information. I had heard about this before but didn’t really know what exactly it was. Good to know! Good luck with fighting it! All the best!
Scream 3, hon.
When life gives you Lymes, make lemonade.
RIP Parker Posey. Uh, I mean get well soon. Lyme disease doesn’t sound very fun.
We recently moved to a secluded area with a lot of trees surrounding us, and the ticks here (PA) are terrible! My husband and I have been lucky so far not to find any on ourselves, but we found 3 on our little boy…two of them in one night! All of them were found in his hair, so he got a buzzcut.
The ticks we found were the larger brown ones, which I’m under the impression do not carry Lyme Disease. We had them tested anyway and were told that type of tick carries Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. We’ve had our lawn and trees sprayed twice in the last two months. I’m not taking any chances!
entonophobia <–Me all the way.
Anyway, when I was younger (I grew up in PA) I had one imbedded in my scalp. After about 30 mins of my mom and neighbor trying to yank it out (TERRIFYING knowing that thing was burrowed under my head), it plopped off and landed (fully expanded) on my lap. Most traumatizing experience.
*Shudders*
Holy good god. That sound’s horrifying.
I really hate ticks too! Growing up in NH we had a lot of them. Mostly they ended up on our cats and now and then on us, mostly just on clothes though. I’ve never had a horrible experience with them though which is good. I do take much pleasure in burning them though! We even had a cookie sheet that was pretty much only used to dispose of found ticks in the summer. Die ticks, die!
Eh, whatever…. pretty much everyone in Pennsylvania gets Lyme disease. Old news.
What I meant to say is… Welcome to the Club!
I had Lyme disease when I was eight. It started out w/ what looked like a mosquito bite on my ankle. The itching was so terrible. Within days it grew to about 2 inches in diameter and developed the bulls eye rash. My grandma thought it was ringworm, so we treated it for two weeks with micatin. Several weeks later I began to suffer from extreme fatigue, and would sleep on my grandma’s rocking chair for 4-5 hours during the day. Normally I was an active child running around outside or always up to something. My grandma knew something was wrong, we went to the doc and they discovered Lyme disease via blood tests. Turns our the rash we thought was ringworm was really not. Took antibiotics and was back to my normal self.
I got sick a year and a half ago, and that was one of the things they tested me for, luckily I had something worse and just had surgery and I’m fine now. I can’t imagine being sick like that for over 2 years, you have my sympathy.
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lyme disease sounds like something people got and died from in like the ’20’s. I can’t believe people still get it.
I’ve had lyme disease twice now (once when I was two or so and once three years ago-I’m 20 now) and neither episode ended up being a big deal. I saw the bulls eye, knew what it was, went to the doctor and got treated. The only symptoms I ever had was scratchy-ness, slight fever and some joint/bone aches. I’ve just gotten so used to the ticks that it doesn’t even faze me anymore. (Oh, and I live in PA also).