Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Regarding the Gazette story of March 22 headlined: “Have Host Will Travel, Ticks And Deer Thrive On Vineyard.”

The Vineyard is famous for many things, one being ticks. I am an Island wannabe and after one of my many yearly visits in May 2010, I arrived back home in New Hampshire to discover a tick embedded in my body in a very precarious spot. After a trip to the emergency room for tick removal “surgery,” I inquired about the possibility of Lyme disease. The doctor told me that the remains were indistinguishable but probably negative. Much to my dismay, he jokingly added, now if you had just returned from a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, then that would be an entirely different story! When I could finally speak after my shock and horror, I informed him of my recent excursion to the Island. He promptly and without hesitation prescribed Doxycycline!

I write this so you can add another victim to the tick bite count in 2010, raising the number of people treated with doxy from 1,563 to 1,564. My apologies for the delay in this letter. Being from New Hampshire, there is some lag time in the postal delivery of my Gazette but eagerly await each and every issue. It brings a little bit of the heaven back home to me in New Hampshire.

Barbara Harris

Northwood, N.H.