Tick Bite Yuck!

Tick Bite – Yuck! By Beverly Sandlin

WARNING! GRAPHIC IMAGES!

They turned my stomach…

Okay, I had two deer tick bites last week – oh yes, they were embedded.

Old thinking – cover the tick with Vicks or petroleum jelly to smother them, back them out with a hot match or nail.

New thinking – get the tick out as fast as possible by pulling STRAIGHT BACK with a tweezers.

Don’t press too hard as you want to keep the tick intact. Once out, put it in a ziplock sandwich baggy with a label as to when it attached itself and how long it was attached. Put this in your freezer – I know, another YUCK!

Let’s see if I can remember this as it seems to change every few years. If the tick was attached for 36 hrs., was severely engorged: Embedded

Or you start to feel flu-like symptoms you have 72 hours to get to the doctor and get a prescription of Doxycycline – also available from a vet if you have a good relationship with them.

Now they seem only concerned about the deer tick due to it’s dominance in transmitting Lymes Disease.

Deer Tick versus Wood Tick

Deer tick life stages. So my health insurance 24 hour nurse hotline said to keep the tick in a baggie in the freezer and if I got flu- like symptoms in the next 30 days to contact a doctor. The doctor’s nurse seemed to think that it was too late if the antibiotic wasn’t given within 72 hrs. Just sayin’…

Lymes Disease can have devastating, life threatening affects. My mother ended up in the hospital for a week last year with various serious symptoms that were eventually traced to Lymes Disease.

I had two embedded ticks within 24 hours of each other. One I could reach but shredded it and the head finally festered out two days later – YUCK! The other I couldn’t reach and Bob was able to get out whole and is in the freezer.

I am now back to showering head and body in dollar store anti-dandruff shampoo which seems to keep the ticks moving around long enough for me to pick them off before they embed.

Just sayin’ it’s tick season…