I have spent the last three hours paranoidly checking my vagina for ticks.

Last night, Kir was reading with the dog in his lap while I messed around on the computer, and he found two ticks on the top of her head.

“Violet, Tezy has bugs on her.”

“What kind of bugs”

“The kind we have to pull out.”

“Ticks, she has ticks?”

“Call your mom.”

So I got on the phone to call my mom, but she was at work, and the phone was busy both times I called, and I am 27 years old, married and living in Turkmenistan, I should be able to cope with ticks without calling my mommy first. I went and got a book of matches. Lit a match, blew it out, touched the hot match to the tick while Kir held Tezy’s head still. It had absolutely no effect on the tick. Then I decided we should try pulling it out with tweezers. Kir agreed, saying that he had helped my mom take a tick off one of the dogs in Miami with tweezers. So I immobilized the puppy, and Kir pulled both ticks out with tweezers. No problem – they came out head intact and everything.

We checked the dog head to toe, twice, and found no further ticks. We calmed down, and went to bed, agreeing than from now on whenever we brought the dog into the house we’d check her for creepy-crawlies.

Then, this morning, about seven-thirty, I woke up because I had to pee. I took my naked self off to the bathroom (hey, it’s hot now) and then went back to bed. I was snuggling back under the sheet when I brushed at an itchy spot on my arm. Which turned out to be a tick crawling on me. I picked the tick off me and killed it, leapt out of bed, patted down my whole body for more bugs, and did some whimpering. After a minute or so of whimpering, I got back into bed, and then spent about ten minutes thinking every itchy spot on my body was another tick. Eventually I gave up and went downstairs, where I called my mother to discuss the incident and also searched the web to find out more about ticks.

You know, I took an extra-long shower. I got dressed in clean clothes. I am now at the office where my dog has never been. But I still feel like every itch is a blood sucker, and I can’t get past this fear that a tick crawled inside me and is sucking my blood even as I sit here. And I’m not squeamish. I checked in there with a finger. There are no ticks. But about every fifteen minutes, I have to go check again. Because maybe I missed it the last several times.

I am never sleeping naked again.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.