Yes, I would say that longtime city folks who move to the far out burbs and then within a year and a half want to move back to the city are being a bit impulsive. Maybe their reasons are understandable but it's still impulsive.

At any rate, you've got one life. If you can afford to eat the cost of selling and moving, yet again, this soon - what's to stop you? I wouldn't use Lyme as the excuse though because it does sound like there is more to it than that.

Anonymous wrote:You can get bitten by a deer tick almost anywhere. And usually even if you do get bitten you won't develop Lyme disease. The stress of moving probably had his resistance down...

I agree with the others who say clear the land, spray and use repellent on yourself and your kids when you are working or playing outside.

pLUS 1. Absolutely STAY.

You can put a 6 foot (or even 8 foot) fence around the perimeter of your property to keep the deer out.

I think the lyme disease is a red herring. I think you ultimately don't like your town and want to move back to the city. That's ok - but just own it. No reason to be ashamed about it. Move, if you can afford the loss.

https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/maps.html

You can click between 2012 and 2015 and see the map hasn't changed drastically.

You made a mistake so now you have to fix it. What is your first step?

Personally I would move into a city environment where I would feel more comfortable.

Anonymous wrote:OP here -- just two points in our defense!

-Yes, you can get Lyme disease anywhere. (It's still pretty rare in California though!) However, there are definite Lyme hot spots -- like, houses with large fields where deer graze, near water sources, surrounded by ancient stone walls where chipmunks and mice live. That's our house. And this town in general has a measurably higher Lyme Index then most -- yes, the state keeps track -- and we have met many people who have been incapacitated by the disease.

-Are we being immature and impulsive? I'm quite worried that we are! However, it's so hard to separate what is the experience of the disease and what is just "the suburbs didn't turn out like we thought" syndrome. Would you say that longtime city people who moved to the far-out 'burbs and hated it after 18-months and wanted to move back were impulsive? Because that happens all the time. We might have gone crazy with boredom and isolation even if we were in the pink of health. It's impossible to tell. That's a huge part of this puzzle for me.

The Lyme index in the town didn't skyrocket when you purchased the house. You bought that house (not in CA) where there already was a Lyme hot spot. What do YOU want to do? If you just want to complain then please do. Or you can start looking at moving.

OP here -- just two points in our defense!

-Yes, you can get Lyme disease anywhere. (It's still pretty rare in California though!) However, there are definite Lyme hot spots -- like, houses with large fields where deer graze, near water sources, surrounded by ancient stone walls where chipmunks and mice live. That's our house. And this town in general has a measurably higher Lyme Index then most -- yes, the state keeps track -- and we have met many people who have been incapacitated by the disease.

-Are we being immature and impulsive? I'm quite worried that we are! However, it's so hard to separate what is the experience of the disease and what is just "the suburbs didn't turn out like we thought" syndrome. Would you say that longtime city people who moved to the far-out 'burbs and hated it after 18-months and wanted to move back were impulsive? Because that happens all the time. We might have gone crazy with boredom and isolation even if we were in the pink of health. It's impossible to tell. That's a huge part of this puzzle for me.

I live in DC and got Lyme! Like IN the city, NE to be exact.

But really this is about more than Lyme. It sounds like you may have realized that you are a city person and this lifestyle just isn't for you. Would a different house in the town nearby be better for you? Is there an area near there where you would feel more comfortable that isn't a country setting?

You can get bitten by a deer tick almost anywhere. And usually even if you do get bitten you won't develop Lyme disease. The stress of moving probably had his resistance down...

I agree with the others who say clear the land, spray and use repellent on yourself and your kids when you are working or playing outside.

Go see someone about your anxiety.

You can get Lyme disease anywhere. By moving, you are in no way eliminating the chance of getting it again. By clearing the land you are helping the situation. And make sure to spray. Then just be diligent to check after you've been outside.

You're being immature and impulsive.

There's so much more in this than just the tick bite and Lyme. Somehow everyone else in the town manages to live there.

Take a step back and imagine what you'd say to a friend who did the reverse - moved from country to city as they'd always dreamed, found. Great row house, loved everything etc. but then got mugged outside the house and wanted to move back to the country because they were affraid of living in the city.

I would stay and spray the shit out of my yard.

A year and a half ago my family moved from DC to our "dream house" in semi-rural New England. (Vibrant town with great schools, movie theater, arts and community life, but a 90-minute commute from NYC on a good day. We work from home.) We were extremely familiar with the town -- I grew up there, and my husband grew up near by. We bought a big, old, rambling house that was very overgrown and started to restore it, clearing the jungle-like four acres of land so our kids could have the play space that we always dreamed of for them. It was like an article from Elle Decor!
There was a problem, though. Literally the day that we did our home inspection, my husband got bitten by a tick and got Lyme disease. We never saw the tick. Since we were still in the process of moving and our doctors were in Washington, they didn't catch it and the disease quickly progressed. Even though we were both natives of the area, we didn't make the connection either -- we didn't know though that Lyme disease had rapidly spread in the last 20 years due to certain suburban development patterns, and we associated the sickness with a simple bulls' eye rash and a few aches and pains, instead of full-blown neurological symptoms, with heart-attack-like symptoms thrown in. We thought he had a brain tumor or was in the midst of a mental breakdown.
Finally, after a bizarre tour through many doctors, more than a year of antibiotics (for months administered through an IV) and homeopathic remedies that were far more effective than we would have imagined, my husband is beginning to feel better.
My question is: what do we do with our house?
Miraculously, my husband -- the main breadwinner -- was able to keep working through all of this, so it's less of a financial issue than an emotional one. For starters, we are mildly terrified of these four acres that we saved up for years to buy...because of the deer ticks. Yes, there was an element of terrible luck involved, and now we know what to look for and spray the yard, but the disease is freakishly pervasive -- even just at our small daycare, other parents have been temporarily paralyzed by Lyme disease, for instance. I feel like that's not ok.
More powerful than the particular fear of the disease itself, though, is the sense that this entire area and lifestyle has been poisoned for us. The gorgeous view out of our kitchen window, which sold us on the house? It reminds us of Lyme disease. The "privacy" of a big house and lots of land? It reminds us of our horrifying isolation last winter, when our home basically turned into The Shining. (Luckily, our parents are still in the area, so we had them to talk/sob to.) I do realize that what made all of this so traumatic was circumstantial -- if we'd been living in the area for a while and had a social network, and known the schools and routines, it wouldn't have been such a nightmare. I was also pregnant with my third child throughout this period -- think I got the positive pregnancy test the same week my husband got bitten, haha! So there are stresses that have diminished and will continue to diminish.
But yeah, at the end of the day, I f-ing hate this place and want to move back to a city. We would likely lose a ton of hard-earned money. And though we've been mulling a move for the last year or so, I still worry that we are being somehow immature and impulsive -- since we still want to live near our parents, we have focused on asmall northeastern city with great walkability, restaurants, culture, built-in friends from before, but schools are shaky, crime is pretty high (we dealt with both of these things in our old DC neighborhood), and I worry that we'd be sacrificing our kids' childhoods for grown-up pleasures. And then maybe we'd get robbed at gunpoint and be forever traumatized by that instead.
What would you do?