Around midnight that night--after Rebeca had dropped us off after that l-o-n-g day spent coming home from Karaganda--Rebeca called me. Alison had a tick, she said. Yes, there are ticks in Kazakhstan and they carry deadly diseases just like the ticks in America. She was calling the doctor and suggested I check Sophia for ticks.
Luckily, Sophia, my brother & I seemed to be tick-free. Later that week, I learned from Rebeca how the rest of her night went.
She called the doctor, who came and decided that Alison needed to go to the hospital to have it removed. The doctor was with the ambulance, and so left with Alison in the ambulance. The mother followed in her car, so they could be able to go home after the hospital.
Well, ambulances don't have to follow traffic rules, and especially after today's long events, Rebeca was definitely going to follow traffic rules! And so she soon lost sight of the ambulance. Astana has many hospitals, and she did not know which one her daughter was being taken to. (Rebeca has only lived in Astana for a little longer than I have.) So she drove around from hospital to hospital until she finally found her daughter.
They successfully removed the tick and then gave it to Rebeca so she could bring it to a lab to be tested for lyme disease (or whatever disease it is that Kazakh ticks have).
The next day, Monday, was a holiday--school was in session but most labs were closed. Rebeca finally found a lab that was open and could test the tick.
By Wednesday she learned that the tick was disease-free.
So all's well that end's well, but what a weekend! And now Alison and Sophia are both scared of ticks.
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