My husband hardly ever gets sick, which is good, because he pretty much stinks at it. I guess you could say being ill ticks him off, and I mean that literally. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Like my husband, many people see illness as an irritating interruption. Sometimes, though, one creeps up and demands your attention. Lyme disease is one such creeper.

You can tell Lyme disease is a serious condition because it starts with a capital letter. They reserve proper nouns for significant diseases; often a scientist in a white lab coat donates his or her name to the cause just so a disease can have a suitable name. In this case, Lyme takes its moniker from a small town in Connecticut.

That’s big; or it would be, if it weren’t so little. Not Connecticut, the tick. Lyme disease is caused by bacteria in the saliva of teeny tiny deer ticks – predators about the size of a pinhead. So small they’re big enough to down a grown man.

Which brings us back to my husband, the impatient patient with no time for ticks.

He woke up last Saturday with the Lyme disease trademark feared by anyone east or west of the Mississippi. A telltale bull’s-eye rash covered the back of his calf and was roughly the size of Texas, except rounder.

The doctor confirmed our diagnosis and sent my husband home with an extra-large bottle of antibiotics – or what I like to think of as anti-bull’s-eye bullets.

My husband took one pill – maybe two – and the pacing began. He continued to ache, sweat and shiver, and wondered what else might be wrong. Certainly a little tick couldn’t cause such distress. Could it?

After some brainstorming, we Googled flesh-eating bacteria. Thankfully, his telltale bull’s-eye rash looked nothing like flesh eating bacteria. It also didn’t resemble blood poisoning or any of the other five fatal skin rashes pictured online. Thank goodness.

Still, my husband remained antsy and unsatisfied. This tick thing had gotten under his skin.

He glanced back at his calf, thought maybe the rash was growing and decided we needed a baseline measurement. He got one of those permanent markers that are never dull and had me outline the circles on his leg. Now we’d be able to tell if the rash that wasn’t flesh-eating bacteria was expanding – or shrinking.

We’d done everything possible to handle our ticky situation. All that was left was to wait for the antibiotics to kick in.

Along with being sick, waiting is blatantly absent from my husband’s bucket list. He sat on the couch – clearly bugged by it all.

He needed some guidance, but I am no Florence Nightingale. My husband may not excel at being ill; I pull a close second when it comes to nursissistic tendencies. I didn’t even have a can of chicken noodle soup in the cupboard.

So I did the best with what I had. I offered him a hot dog and suggested he lie down. Sleep cures what ails you – or something like that.

I sat on the other couch to provide encouragement and support – well, that and watch the Food Network. Within minutes, the eyelids grew heavy and the couch felt mighty soft. I peeked over at my husband; he looked pretty relaxed, too.

I henceforth modeled appropriate patient behavior by engaging in (I’m using medical terminology here) an empathy nap. I continued empathizing in such a manner for the next two or three days, at which point the telltale bull’s-eye rash began to fade and my husband’s energy and appetite returned.

His recovery up to this point has been better than I’d hoped and I am grateful. Illness is worrisome, and can trigger unwanted stress. Those little ticks cause quite a drain on the energy-meter – and that’s coming straight from experience. I’m not going to lie; it’s been tough.

I may need to engage in more empathy therapy this weekend. With everything my husband’s been through in the last week, I figure it’s the least I can do – to provide my support and all.