It was an ordinary Friday morning. Which meant I was running late.

It was 7:30am and I was still in my bathroom putting on my makeup. I had to make my lunch, eat some breakfast and (hopefully) grab my Starbucks Vanilla Cream Cold Brew and still be at work by 8am.

Which meant that per usual, my hair would go up into a ponytail, causing me again to wonder why I spend close to $200 every three months at the salon when I don’t use my hair to its full potential.

As I pulled my hair back, I noticed a black-ish scab on my hairline. Right in the middle of my upper forehead.

“That’s weird,” I thought. I didn’t remember bumping my head or scratching a mosquito bite there. I couldn’t recall a late-in-life pimple (oh yeah, I still get them) popping and healing.

I scratched at it, but it didn’t move. I scratched a little harder. Nothing. I moved closer to the mirror (because yes, I can’t see a thing due to terrible eyesight). As I moved my head toward the mirror, a terrible thought occurred to me.

TICK!!!

As I got closer, I could see that the black spot was not a scab, it was a tick. Even worse, it was a LIVE tick. Yes, I had a live tick embedded in my hairline, its body firmly attached to me with its eight legs flailing around.

Now, I am fairly calm in a crisis. I can make rational decisions and take over and lead the people to safety if need be.

Exception: Once, when my kids were around 2 and 5, our family was in the kitchen together. Ted and I were preparing lunch when I looked down at my feet as saw a mouse there. (The only thing I have been able to conclude from the multiple times I have played this trauma over in my head is that someone let the dog in from outside and didn’t notice she had a mouse in her mouth. I assume she was leaving this treasure as a present for me.) Anyway, the second I saw that thing I screamed (and I mean SCREAMED) and went running into our office, leaping on top of the desk while shrieking at the top of my lungs, leaving my children alone, fully embodying the “save thyself” mantra. It was not my proudest moment.

So let me rephrase that. I am fairly calm in a crisis that doesn’t include a live animal.

Back to the tick.

By now I was freaking out. Sobbing and crying and panicking but still, of course, conscientious enough to text my coworkers that I would be late and by the way there was a tick in my head.

Now, I work in a grade school. Occasionally, we see a student come into the nurse’s office with a tick attached to them. In fact, just the week before, the school nurse, Olivia, had removed a tick from a student’s head while the poor boy was wailing and crying. At the time, I was fascinated with the whole procedure. But truth be told, I was also internally shaming him for overreacting. Mind you, this was a 10-year-old.

One week later and God was teaching me a lesson in empathy and humility.

I texted Olivia that she needed to get to my house now and remove this thing. We decided to meet at the school where the official tick-removing tool was. I was in no shape to drive, so Ted took me and dropped me at the door. Thankfully, my coworker, Diane, was already closing all the blinds in the nurse’s office and readying the room as if I were having surgery (which I kind of was). Less than 10 seconds later, Olivia had popped that sucker right off my head and placed it in a to-go bag for me.

After doing all sorts of research, I discovered that it was a male dog tick and was pretty harmless since it had not been attached long and left no mark. I am going to assume the culprit was the female husky that sleeps all over the house and rubs her body in any gross thing she can find in the yard. This is the first tick experience in the 24 years of living in this woodsy yard, so I am going to pray it was a one-off.

It has been a couple of months, and I still find myself itchy and paranoid and checking my dog periodically and trying to stay away from trees and bushes. I worry about every mark and piece of dirt on my skin. The other day I saw something small and black on my desk and jumped out my chair only to realize it was a crumb from the mint chocolate chip protein bar I was eating.

Overall, I would place this experience somewhere between the Fall of 2014 when we had lice in our house and having myself cut open twice during my C-Sections. Lice lasted much longer, but for some reason didn’t freak me out quite so much. Having C-Section’s is a longer recovery, but at least you end up with a baby at the end.

Then again….those babies stay attached to you much longer than that tick did…..:)