A little too much nature.

[rivka]

Michael had a meeting this afternoon at the UU church in Towson. I had an errand to do in the approximate vicinity, so Alex and I dropped him off, did my errand, and went back to the Towson church to wait for him. The meeting, unsurprisingly, ran late.

The Towson church has lovely grounds, including a well-maintained "nature trail" that's perhaps a quarter-mile long. Alex and I walked its length and back. There were numbered markers that presumably correlated with some kind of printed guide, but there was plenty to see even without a guide.

This evening, during her bath, I ran my soapy hands down her legs and felt a little bump behind one knee. I tried to wash it off. No luck. It was a small black circular mark.

"Michael!" I called. "Would you bring up Alex's magnifying glass, please?"

Michael took a look while I was drying Alex off. She was pretty wiggly, but he said he thought it was just a scab.

"That's a funny place to have a scab," I said. We laid her down on her stomach on the bed for a closer look. Bringing in a flashlight to aid the magnifier made it clear: she had a tick. And Maryland is a Lyme disease state.

Michael dredged up memories from a Tennessee childhood and recommended putting Vaseline on it so the tick would have to back out to breathe. I was unsure, so I dashed downstairs to ask Dr. Google, who (in the form of the American Academy of Family Physicians) informed me that Vaseline can actually cause the tick to salivate or, um, regurgitate into the victim. Not recommended. So in the end, Michael just pulled the tick straight out with tweezers, and it came away clean. I saved it in a plastic bag just in case. It was even still alive. Alex was fascinated to see it.

A few different sites assure me that ticks need to be attached for 24 hours or more to transmit Lyme disease. Michael checked the rest of her body thoroughly, and he's going to check me before bed.

Presumably, if we'd had the printed guide to the nature trail? One of those rustic numbered markers would've turned out to mean "deer ticks." Had we but known.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

As you probably found out, watch her for flu-like symptoms; if she comes down with them, you're dealing with, like, two days of antibiotics and no lasting effects. They've come a hell of a long way in treating Lyme disease since my Uncle Bob was hospitalized for weeks by a tick; my father had Lyme disease a couple days ago, and ended up with a day of bed rest. It was supposed to be three days of bed rest, but he got bored. And he's over sixty years old.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yep. We're also watching her for a bullseye rash.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Was it really really small, smaller than the head of a pin? Deer ticks are much smaller than wood ticks, and they're the ones that carry lymes. If it's engorged, it can be hard to tell, but luckily if it's not engorged, it hasn't been on long enough to transmit anything.

It's a very good idea to be vigilant and catch things early. Even if she doesn't have the rash, the flu symptoms can take a couple of weeks, and it can be a month before the blood test can show anything. Luckily, that's still plenty of time to medicate with few problems. But if you keep your eyes out, you're fine with all of the nature in the world. :-) For those of us living in wooded areas (and especially with dogs that bring the little beasties in) ticks are a weekly, or sometimes even daily, reality. The worst is that they like to crawl into intimate places. Jeff pulled one off of his penis recently, and I had a deer tick right where my leg meets my groin. Not trying to scare you, but just be sure to check everywhere.

Still, they're creepy and icky, aren't they? Ick.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

It was indeed really, really small. Definitely not engorged, and much smaller than the ticks I remember growing up around in Tennessee when I was younger. One of my classmates on a 6th-grade trip had the misfortune of finding a tick in a very personal place, and I can still to this day remember the cry of "THERE'S A TICK ON MY DICK!!!!" coming from the boys' bathroom.

I went over her scalp as well as I could, given that she's got long, thick hair, but we'll continue to check over the summer. I also checked her everywhere else, and she's clear; the places we used to have the most trouble with were behind the knee, behind the ear, and along the scalp line.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Wow, good thing you caught that. I don't think it was attached long enough to have done her any damage, but keeping an eye on her for a few days is a good idea.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

Oh, ick. Glad it appears to be just one, and for a short time.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I'm in Australia, so Lyme disease isn't a problem, but I had a tick in my belly button the other night. It was quite the exercise to get the tweezers in to take it out.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Yick... too much nature indeed. But it sounds like you got it quickly and know what to be aware of.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

*gark!*

Horrid little beasts.

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

Wow. I haven't even thought of that much this year yet. Frankly, I don't know that I would have caught it unless she complained. It's not like I abandon my kid, but I really don't inspect her very well.

With the recent rainfall and flooding, I guess we're looking at more mosquito-based problems, though.

Hope everything's uneventful!

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Speaking as another person with a Tennessee childhood, I would never have put Vaseline on the tick! :) I was always taught to burn them off. No, seriously, burn them off. Usually this was done by heating the end of the tweezers or by putting a freshly lit and blown out matchstick head to them.

Not sure if that's even better, but since we lived in a fairly wooded area we were always on the look out for ticks. My mom was an expert at using heated tweezers and the words, "It'll hurt worse if you move!"

I think she should be okay. Seems like you got it off quickly. Just make sure to keep checking in her hair, because ticks LOOOOOOVE the scalp.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Eddie had one *in* his ear on our last camping trip. It was all I could do to keep him calm while I picked it out (hadn't bit deep yet) while everybody else in camp was panicking. Ah, the joys of camping!

Alex might like a game where you pretend that you're monkeys going through each others "fur". :-)

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

We didn't burn them off. You held a just-blown-out matchhead to one side of the tick and quite close; the tick got uncomfortably warm and unscrewed itself (we have the big ones out here and they screw themselves in) and moved off. Have removed several ticks that way as a kid.

Tweezing was not recommended back then because you could pull the head and leave it in the skin, where it could get infected.

Sounds like the tiny ones just bite down? Cool.

I pulled about 120-odd ticks off me one summer (yes, I kept them in a small jar of alcohol, so I know how many there were) when I stayed in the country in Missouri (nearly all before they found a spot to latch on; you got very aware of how it felt to have one on you) and under a dozen of them off me during my childhood in Eastern Oregon. We had an annual innoculation for Rocky Mountain Spotted fever out here.

They're icky, but ... *shrug* They're just a creepy-crawly mosquito. Glad she was fascinated and not freaked. You're such a good calm parent. *hugs*

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Our own family home remedy was to soak a cotton ball in isopropyl alcohol and hold it over the tick for a few minutes. It worked pretty well on the larger ticks; we never tried it on deer ticks.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

You mean the spiders, snakes, poisonous jellyfish etc aren't enough -- you have ticks TOO?

(Then again I come from the land of poisonous trees that can kill people -- what we lack in numbers we make up for in sheer style.)

[tea-dragon.livejournal.com]

Ick ick ICK! Wow, you handled that well! I grew up with the big kind, we always used blown out matches as well.

We found out the hard way last summer that it's always a good idea to wash off after being out in nature- Sarah got poison ivy or something like that on her ankle and it didn't bother her until the next day. If we had washed it off right away her blisters wouldn't have been nearly as bad.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Yep. There's something called the "paralysis tick" but it's more a problem for pets, because it has to be on for a few days before it induces paralysis.

But yeah, the trees that kill people, that's quite something.

[ailbhe]

My mother got Lyme about 8 years ago and we all got COVERED in ticks when we went to see her last week. I'm the only one who's been ill since but I'm having a tough time deciding whether I need to get checked out for Lyme disease - it's not common in the British Isles. "Flu-like symptoms" covers a multitude.

We always pick them out as soon as we spot them, with our fingernails, pulling in the direction of their rear ends as they lie against the skin. It's sheep ticks, not deer ticks, which carry Lyme in the British Isles.