Ticks are tiny. One can be smaller than a grain of rice. Yet the little critters can cause a great deal of harm. Savannah Marcum knows about that. She is one of millions of Americans with Lyme disease — a sickness that people get from a tick bite. Marcum shared her story for Lyme Disease Awareness Month this May.
“I got Lyme disease when I was 14,” said Marcum. “I got really sick,” she explained. “I only was able to go to three days of my freshman year of high school — and then I was too sick to go.”
Marcum is now 23 years old. Yet she still lives with the effects of Lyme disease. And she also got three other diseases from that single tick. “One little tick could infect you with multiple types of tick ,” she explained.
Tick bites don’t hurt, so you might not even notice if you get one. “I don’t ever remember getting a tick bite,” said Marcum. She didn’t get a tick bite rash either. But she got a terrible headache. “I just couldn't think,” she explained. “Nothing made sense.” She soon got other symptoms. “I was super-nauseous. I was really tired. I would get dizzy.” That’s not all. “I had insomnia,” she added, “so I stopped sleeping.”
Marcum was very sick for many years. “I worked really, really hard through all of the years that I was sick to not lose who I am as a person,” she explained. She had to make sure to continue the activities that brought her joy. Those included painting, learning languages, making music, creating YouTube videos, and sewing. “I made a real effort to make time in my life to do happy stuff,” said Marcum. Today, she said she is mostly better.
Marcum always enjoyed nature. “I spent most of my life outdoors,” she explained. Marcum said getting sick didn’t change that. “I do still go outside every day,” she said. However, now she works to protect herself — and her pets. (She has four cats and a dog!) So, she checks for ticks often and follows “simple tips like wearing the right kind of clothes.”
“Tick awareness is not about being afraid,” Marcum explained from her home in central California. “It’s about being educated and aware. Those things bring you strength and power. If you’re aware, you don’t have to go through something like what I went through.”
“It shouldn’t stop you from living the life that you want to live.”
Updated May 17, 2021, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Russell Kahn (Russ)
