Tick Checks, Bug Spray and Antibiotics: Summer in the Age of Lyme

Tick Checks, Bug Spray and Antibiotics: Summer in the Age of Lyme

I live on Block Island most summers, a small sea-swept island 13 miles off the Rhode Island coast. Every season, Lyme disease cripples the community here, as it does in many wooded Northeastern towns, but I’ve never seen it as epidemic — and as controversial — as it is this year. Never have I heard so many friends, acquaintances and strangers complain of being laid low by the disease. My neighbor one house down was just released from the hospital with a serious case, a friend’s son had it twice this spring, and my mother’s dog was just diagnosed with its third case in two years. Read more.