If you have read Amelia Johnson's UNACCEPTABLE, you will know why Tick Bite Prevention Week is crucial. Help us raise awareness.

Ticks are small crawling bugs that may carry bacteria, viruses, or other pathogens that cause disease in humans and/or animals. Here are a few reminders about how to avoid the risk of tick bites and Lyme disease, from the Global Lyme Alliance:

• Avoid high-traffic areas known to host ticks that carry Lyme disease like tall grasses and leaf piles.
• Wear clothing to protect from ticks and Lyme disease, like long sleeves, pants, and socks.
• Apply EPA-approved tick repellent properly.
• Remove clothing when back indoors, put it in a hot dryer.
• Examine yourself for ticks daily as the risk of Lyme disease is always there.

For more information and resources, check out LymeDisease.org and Project Lyme. If you are unfamiliar with the effects of Lyme disease, please read Amelia Johnson's memoir UNACCEPTABLE: Another Day Lost to Lyme Disease.

Perfectly healthy…until she isn't. Amelia questions everything when she finds herself inexplicably and devastatingly ill. From electrocutions to explosions and dislocations, her symptoms are as terrifying as they are unexplained. Doctors are confounded. Hypotheses are proven wrong. One by one, practitioners give up, leaving Amelia to solve the enigma on her own—bedridden, bearing insufferable pain, misdiagnosed and misunderstood.

Forced to embark on this solitary quest for answers, Amelia is swept into a world she never knew existed. A world where a disease and its dangerous treatments are mired in controversy. Who can she trust? How did this happen? And what can she do before it’s too late? As her body continues to unravel, so does her identity. She loses herself a bit more every day. In order to have a future, Amelia will need to dig deep into her past.

Spanning two countries and thirty-one years, UNACCEPTABLE is gritty and raw. It is a story of discovery and the sheer fortitude it takes to endure a life-altering illness. And maybe even one day, rise above.