URGENT--I need tick help!!

[Juniper]

You may want to read this and keep an eye on things. It sounds like it takes awhile to develop symptoms.

 

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/06/lone-star-tick-causing-meat-allergies-in-central-virginia-77073.html

[Laurie4b]

Many will say that you could wait and see, but having lived with undiagnosed, then misdiagnosed Lyme Disease and co-infections for years - and ending up with life-long ramifications - I am in the don't-wait-for-symptoms camp.

 

Not everyone gets a bullseye, not everyone shows obvious symptoms right away, and testing is not known to be reliable.

 

Treating Lyme is a fairly simple thing, if it's caught quickly and treated adequately. Treating Lyme that was undiagnosed for a longer length of time... Not simple, not quick, and not cheap, either.

 

I would ask for a minimum of 30 days antibiotics for each person bitten, at an adequate dose to be bactericidal. 6 weeks would be better. The longer treatment time is to cover the entire lifespan of the spirochete.

 

And even after treatment, I would watch like a hawk for symptoms. Not only Lyme symptoms, but symptoms of co-infections that may not have been caught by the initial round of abx, because not all co-infections will be covered by abx.

 

Just my thoughts. If you go another route, that's okay, too. :)

 

ETA: a great trick you might try (to kill any hitchhikers on clothes/gear) ... toss your stuff in the dryer on high for a half hour to an hour.

 

In areas in which Lyme is not frequent, they don't dispense prophylactic antibiotics.

[Laurie4b]

I understand where you are coming from, but would you really advocate this? It would mean that anybody who regularly is in the woods would be on antibiotics for six months out of the year if they do that for every tick bite - because despite all caution, ticks can not really be avoided.

Surely that can not be healthy either, and can lead to resistances?

 

I've posted this before:

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=map+lyme+disease&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=675&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=3g5Y3AOpeo3-9M:&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lyme_Disease_Risk_Map.gif&docid=DYN_WYsZH8jnCM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Lyme_Disease_Risk_Map.gif&w=556&h=440&ei=4THhT5eABoee8QScxOy5DQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=405&vpy=154&dur=986&hovh=200&hovw=252&tx=183&ty=124&sig=117043876713419074454&page=1&tbnh=149&tbnw=188&start=0&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:77

How you (and your doctor) react to tick bites depends on how high risk Lyme is for your area. SC is not high risk. My father lives in a high risk area and they do routinely give prophylactic antibiotics if anyone has a deer tick lodged on them for more than 24 hours. The doctors weigh the risks/benefits of antibiotics vs. no antibiotics by the risk of disease. We get tick bites all the time here and we pull them off, flush them , wash our hands and put antibiotic ointment on it and go about life without worrying a lot. We are in a low-risk area, though I have a friend who contracted Lyme's here. OTOH, if the kids get bitten at my dad's the protocol is different.