This is exactly right.

My name is Brian Allen.

I'm an associate professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois,

and I study the ecology of ticks and tick-borne diseases.

And I got into this line of work as a result of my first experience with Lyme disease,

which was both my first research experience with Lyme disease, but also my first experience

with contracting Lyme disease.

So I was fortunate the summer after my senior year of college to get a research internship

at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in upstate New York.

And I was funded to study the ecology of Lyme disease.

This was the summer of 2000.

So I had the summer internship, and a lot of what it involved was traveling to different

Lyme disease hotspots and collecting ticks in those locations.

And so of course, and of course, the work.

I was pretty diligent about protecting myself against tick bites, but the infection rate

in ticks in that area is incredibly high.

And so that point in the summer, at least one tick got through my defenses, and I came

down with Lyme disease.

And so that was my first brush with the illness as well as with studying the biology of the

disease.

I don't believe I ever found the one that got me.

So I just came down with the symptoms.

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