<p> Tick Bite – Yuck! By Beverly Sandlin</p><p>WARNING! GRAPHIC IMAGES!</p><p>They turned my stomach…</p><p>Okay, I had two deer tick bites last week – oh yes, they were embedded.</p><p>Old thinking – cover the tick with Vicks or petroleum jelly to smother them, back them out with a hot match or nail.</p><p>New thinking – get the tick out as fast as possible by pulling STRAIGHT BACK with a tweezers.</p><p>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!</p><p>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</p><p>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.</p><p>Now they seem only concerned about the deer tick due to it’s dominance in transmitting Lymes Disease.</p><p>Deer Tick versus Wood Tick</p><p>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’…</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Just sayin’ it’s tick season…</p>