yosemite

felt it was a little over-ambitious to head inland from the coast but was overruled. not a huge fan of the outdoors but wilderness medicine has changed me so yosemite did not prove as unattractive as it might've a few years ago. i also have wilderness medicine, well, medicine in general, to thank for quickly diagnosing lyme disease. what a walking cliche, right? when one spies an MCQ question that talks about yosemite, the answer is always lyme disease. in fact, when i told medic friends that i was going to / had just been to yosemite, the inevitable question was did you get lyme disease? and the unfortunate answer was yes. wish i was making it up but despite adequate cover and bite protection, a deer tick managed to make its way to me. 

and while i was initially laughing at the bite, a facetime consultation proved otherwise and was told in no uncertain terms to get the appropriate antibiotics stat. was in denial that night but come morning the tell-tale bulls eye pattern developed and i'd to eat my words (and pop those pills). thankful to travel with a pharmacy but do think, again, uhmurikan paranoia would've made it easy to obtain abx over the counter if necessary. dodged a bullet there and early identification and treatment is really the best management. funny story - marked the erythema (redness and swelling) with a pen and used it as an excuse to prance around in daisy dukes, only to have people say it was a  cool tat. thaaanks. was also mistaken for a minor on the plane ride home (LA to tokyo) but i blame the lack of clothing and general calafare attitude.

was yosemite worth the lyme disease? maybe. it was pretty but trees and more trees did get boring after a while.

cottage was pretty sweet though!