I visited NH and all I got was this lousy tick bite. Tell me about Lyme Disease

[slowzuki]

I visited NH monday and tues and on tues am when I got up I discovered what I later identified as a deer tick nymph just about the waistband of my pants.  Went to the drug store and got a tick removal tool and got it off in one piece.

I read that the lyme disease infection rates in NH are 50%-70% of deer ticks are carriers.  We don't really have them here at home and doctors don't really know how to approach it.

What should I be doing?

[SwampDonkey]

I don't know what to tell ya. But, something sure reached out and grabbed ahold of me real hard the last few days. Every muscle in my body yesterday afternoon and last night was in cronic pain and my kneck has been stiff for 3 days. On monday I wasn't sure I was going to get out of the woods and on the drive back I was some dizzy character. I still have a slight fever along with this mess and I noticed a few red blotches that don't itch on my arms. I'm sure it's some kind of immune response to something.  :

[Dan_Shade]

did you keep the tick?

you may get a bull's eye with a lot of swelling at the tick bite.  If you do, then go to the doctor, and they will give you doxycycline to combat the bacteria that causes lyme disease.

there is a lot of info out there on lyme disease.  I seem to remember a 3 week time period of getting the antibiotic if you are infected.  I also think the tick has to be imbedded for 72 hours to give you the disease.

[SwampDonkey]

I've recently heard on public radio (CBC) that most folks in New Brunswick that have got the lymes disease ended up going out of province for treatment because our health care practioners are not prepared to deal with it and have misdiagnosed it on many occassions.

[Dan_Shade]

i believe that typically the symptoms don't show up for a few years, which can make diagnosis difficult, couple that with the fact that lyme can affect any and all of the systems in your body doesn't make it any easier to diagnose it.

[UNCLEBUCK]

 The deer tick I think is quite small compared to the normal tick . I hate em all and spray my boots with "off" or "raid" to keep them from attacking me but I just yank em off and make sure I take a scalding hot shower every night .  Have had a few that left a swelling red bump and I dont know if its in my mind but have had fever and tired for 2 days after a red bump was left.   Not sure of anything with ticks except I hate them . Still better than snowsnakes I think ?   

[asy]

Gosh Buck, you've sure got some CRITTERS at your place!

I would HATE to live somewhere there were ticks. Never mind the hot shower, I'd require someone to check me EVERY DAY. I'd be terrified there was one on my back and I couldn't see it!

asy :D

[simonmeridew]

Hi Slow
The following is not medical advice, for informative purposes only. Seek medical advice from your doctor. :   
Deer ticks are tiny: this time of year about the size of this period.  '.'  The carrier rate is probably much lower than you have seen reported. Also
most authorities claim it must be on you for 24 hours before it's imbedded enough to bite, somewhat longer to infect if it is infact a carrier, which is unlikely. Symptoms typially show up about two to three weeks after infection, showing a large "bullseye" at the site of bite, red, maybe 2 inches in diameter. Some have reported no bullseye. Symptoms can be quite variable and can appear months later. Best bet, start doxycycline 100 mg: 1 or 2 daily. Also since the lyme organism is a spirochete, easily available penicillin or amoxicillin is also effective. I had three on my legs when I came back from Cape May NJ a couple of years ago. I took amoxicillin 500 mg 4 times a day for at least 3 weeks. Like I said see your own MD.
PS The moose I shot 6 years ago was COVERED  with ticks, both wood ticks and deer tics. I would estimate several thousand. Creepy
simonmeridew

[Bill]

Lyme disease

A couple years back a lady friend and I both picked up ticks that were tiny on a Saturday and by Sunday we had them off. Monday we had small bullseyes and independently went to diiferent doctors. Both doctors immediately put us on antibiotics - sorry i don't remember the type - while they let their tests run. Both tests came back negative but we were told that was typical since the test was run so quickly after the bite so our doctors had us finish the antibotic treatment anyway . We're both fine now.

Some of what I recall was that the symptoms tend to be flu like and go dormant in awhile - however - the infection is only growing internally ( could be over a year or more ) . A guy at the company I worked for had an advanced case - they didn't catch it till more than a year after the bite. He was a mess with all kinds of neurological damage that can't be reversed.

My thought would be to see a doctor for a lyme disease test and the course of antibiotics if at all any question.

Hope all is well with you and yours . . .

[Gary_C]

All good advice here. It is important to note that not all people have the bullseye rash. Also the tests are somewhat inconclusive.

If you have been exposed, in your case bitten, the doctor will usually opt for the safest option which is to give the antibotics. So please seek your doctors advice immediately. If he is uncertain on what to do, there is help and advice available.

[RSteiner]

Gosh Buck, you've sure got some CRITTERS at your place!

I would HATE to live somewhere there were ticks. Never mind the hot shower, I'd require someone to check me EVERY DAY. I'd be terrified there was one on my back and I couldn't see it!

asy :D

I don't like those things either!!! 

I have lived in New Hampshire so far all my life and have not really had a tick bite yet.  Twice I found one on my clothes and once found one on the skin of my leg which had not bitten yet.  Years ago you didn't have to worry about these nasty little bugs.

If we have spent the day in an area where we think ticks would be my wife and I both check the areas of our bodies we I can not see.  The relationship between a man and his wife is now measured by these little bugs.  When anybody asks how we are getting along we say, well we are still picking ticks.

Randy

[asy]

hehehe Good one Randy.

Since I'm not married, I'll have to look for volunteers. :D

asy :D

[raycon]

My back rock wall is in Lyme,CT. Namesake of the disease.

Plenty of ticks in our woods and fields thats for sure.  When I pull off a tick I put tea tree oil on the bite site it and start taking Selenium (200 mg).
  If sometime with in the next month you spike a fever, lose your appetite, head aches, etc get checked for lymes.  If the bulls eye appears not necessairily at the bite site get to the doctor. Treated quickly it should not linger long. Left untreated things can get nasty.
I'd not worry about it to much just head to a doctor if symptoms appear.

[SwampDonkey]

Well I had to go to the hospital today to see what's up in my case. The nurse came in with a basket full of viles and needles and such and jabbed one of them big needles in the arm and filled....I don't know after counting ten of them viles how many litres she sucked out. But, I had to ask her after awhile if I was suppose to fill the whole Dang basketful. SHe said not quite, but I don't think many were left empty. Then had to go in that room of porcelain for the sample. Anyway, they got tested while I waited for 2 hours for the doc to come back after surgery. Said nothing detectable, no infections, white blood count good etc. Gave me a prescription for muscle relaxers.....  :-\ and said if that don't work we'll test for arthuritis. I ain't never had that in my life, and it don't seem to me it happens overnight. Seems to me its a progressive disease ain't it?

SwampDonkey the guinee pig. 

All I know is too many more nights of this muscle pain business and I'm gonna be ready for scientific study.  : :P

[Gary_C]

SwampDonkey

Please read this:  Lyme Diagnosis

If necessary do as I did once when I had the same symptoms as you have and took a copy of this to the doctor.  Basically it says that the tests are unreliable and if you have been exposed to an area where there are ticks present, have a rash and or fever, you should be treated with antibiotics. The risks of not treating far out weigh the potential over use of antibotics. 

[Bill]

I agree completely - my tests came back negative even though I had the "classic" ( which may have disappeared before you even knew to look for it ) bullseye. Far more wise to do the antibiotics than be an invalid later  . . . Make sure the doc understands that lyme disease throws off many different symptoms in different people. I don't want to be sounding like I'm trying to give medical advice - just making sure you get a good going over and cure .

Hope all goes well . . .

[slowzuki]

Well I went to the doc and they won't give anti-biotics unless you get the bullseye or get flu-like symtoms or if you saved the tick and they can test it.  I'm a little nervous now.  Keeping an eye on the bit.

I wish I could just get them, it is just a 15$ prescription...

[gary]

Can you go to a different doctor? I have had to go to as many as 6 doctors before to find one that would do what I wanted done.

[SwampDonkey]

Last couple nights I haven't had to take muscle relaxers and I don't have that cursed muscle aches any more. I take an Ibuprofin once in the morning and evening. Things are looking up, I hope.  ;)

[UNCLEBUCK]

Getting to the doctor ,thats the hard part .  Whats a little tick I say , boy am I going to crash and burn someday .

Hey SwampD, I can take 1200 milligrams ibuprofen and still muscle pain, take 1 bayer aspirin and pain gone .  I went to a cardiology specialist to find that out ,he said all people react differently to different meds and told me to find the one that works best for me .   What you got your pains from? ticks?

[Bill]

FWIW

Without meaning to sound like a broken record the darn lyme disease goes into this kinda remission - where there are no outward symptoms - and then comes back much much later as nasty problems most doctors don't think to associate with lyme disease ( like neurological stuff ) and its too late to reverse the damage. The doc's here are so worried about "false" negatives that they'll treat you with antibiotics if you have had a (small) tick bite or a bullseye or flu like symptoms after a tick bite just because the consequences of untreated lyme disease can't be reversed. There have been cases here where the tick has fallen off ( abrasion by clothing and such ) or the bullseye didn't appear ( like no one saw it or knew to look for it till well after it was gone ) so doc's here have been doing the "CYA" thing and prescribing the anitbiotics.

Again not meaning to beat a dead horse - only having seen a guy a work that got Lyme disease several years ago and it wasn't treated till recently - well they can't rebuild the damage it did so now he's pretty messed up.

Hope all goes well with you and yours . . .    and you have a really good doc taking care of you

[bugmeist]

If you go to our web page  www.bugshirt.com , scroll down our home page to a link that says " click here for 1 woman's story of Lyme Disease...."   

There is lots of resourse info on her site as well as her (fairly scary) personal experience with Lyme.

I know from talking to many folks who have had it that it is not something to take casually!

[johnjbc]

Was out in the field looking for some Locust posts last night and when setting in my chair afterwards I felt something crawling up the back of my knee. Got him before he got me.

[Modat22]

My dad and I both got lyme desease 3 or 4 years ago, luckily we had the tattle tail red rash around the tick bite and knew what we had from reading about it.

The doctor didn't want to do anything even with the rash as an indicator but after 8 months my dad started feeling really bad and I was having joint pains in my ancles and felt generally lathargic, We went back to the doctor and basically complaining until  he started us on a 4 month treatment with heavy antibiotics and we got better. We've had no problems since but I've heard that lyme never truely goes away and requires further treatments (I'm unsure if this is correct or not, please correct me if you know otherwise)

[asy]

Modat, sounds like you guys need a new doctor.

asy :D

[slowzuki]

It can come back yes, it is a combined infection and part of it can hide deep in muscle tissue.  Some people get in cycles of it feeling good for a while after treatment then plunging back in again.

My dad and I both got lyme desease 3 or 4 years ago, luckily we had the tattle tail red rash around the tick bite and knew what we had from reading about it.

The doctor didn't want to do anything even with the rash as an indicator but after 8 months my dad started feeling really bad and I was having joint pains in my ancles and felt generally lathargic, We went back to the doctor and basically complaining until  he started us on a 4 month treatment with heavy antibiotics and we got better. We've had no problems since but I've heard that lyme never truely goes away and requires further treatments (I'm unsure if this is correct or not, please correct me if you know otherwise)

[Tam-i-am]

Lyme is nasty stuff.  Most tick bites do not result in a bullseye that is why so many people can go undiagnosed.  The problem with lyme is that it mimics so many other diseases.  The list of symptoms is about four pages long.  headache, hair loss, twitching, facial paralysis,  vision problems, buzzing in ears, nausea, joint pain, cramping, shortness of breath, chest pains, hear palpitations, numbness in body, tingling, lightheadedness, mood swings, depression, insomnia, memory loss, confusion, speech difficulty, stammering speech, forgetting how to perform simple tasks, sexual dysfunction, unexplained changes in weight, fatigue, and best of all the symptoms change and come and go.

The best thing to do is use lots of deet and check yourself every day.  If you should get bitten go on the antibiotics.  It is much easier to get rid of if you treat it right away.  Ask your doctor for a Western Blot test it is normally the second test they do if the first one shows you are positive for lyme.  However the first test is not very reliable.

I never new I had been bit, never had flu like symptoms.  Then the left side of my face started feeling numb.  I was tested for stroke, brain tumor, and countless other things.  I had a doctor so much as tell me I was nuts that there was nothing wrong with me because he had no quantitative evidence of my symptoms.  He had no way to measure my numbness it was subjective.  By the time I found a doctor who believed me and tested me for lyme my entire left side of my body was numb.  It took 8 months of doxy to finally get rid of my symptoms.

I can't urge you enough to seek treatment right away.
Tammy

[Raphael]

  They say that the tick needs to be attached for over 24hrs so people don't panic and inject themselves with the disease trying to remove the tick.  Reality is that it takes as much time as it takes the tick to feed, nymphs may have to dig a bit before they get blood but they don't take long to fill up once they get there.

  Also Lymes can be completely cured if you treat it soon enough, I'm fortunate in that I'm one of those people that tends to exhibit the rash.

  My first case of Lymes the tick hitched a ride into my house on something I was wearing or carrying and bit me while I was sleeping.  I found it ~12 hours later when I went to take a shower before going into my part time job...
  In my part time life I'm a Medical Laboratory Technologist so I had a small advantage, though at that time there wasn't any direct testing of the tick and spirochetes are notoriously difficult to culture.  I brought it into work for what little testing we did do which amounts to sticking it on a slide and checking it under the microscope.  My tick was still alive and had all it's mouth parts so my extraction was flawless, at that point my choices were to wait and see or go on antibiotics, just in case.  Serology tests won't come up positive until the disease is established and by that time you usually have some symptoms no matter how vague.
  It was a friday afternoon so I decided to wait until monday and see what my own Dr. suggested.  Sunday afternoon I was in the ER with bright ring around the bite, 104° fever, pain in all my joints & major muscles, and a headache from somewhere slightly worse than Hell.

  My second case I wasn't quite as lucky (never saw the tick) although I did have the rash it wasn't as pronounced and I mistook it for a spider bite because I didn't see it in good light until it had been there almost a week.  I had a completely different set of symptoms, that developed slowly rather than hitting me like a truck, including exhaustion and an inability to think rationally...  Spider bites are usually going down after 24hrs. not getting worse.  :

  I suggest anyone with persistant symptoms that can't be pinned on a known cause get the Western Blot, you might need to go to an infectious disease specialist to get it ordered...  That has little to do with the physician, it's the insurance companies and their payment policies that dictate what kind of medical care you can get from who.  In some cases a GP looking at an ekg of a classic MI (major heart attack) that has "Myocardial Infarction/Tachycardia" clearly printed in the interpretation box has to pick up the phone and call in a cardiologist to tell you the result.
-- Sorry my soap box is showing --

  Our Lyme screening test is very good but it only detects the 'igg' form of the antibody which not all people develop strongly enough to generate a positive result and doesn't hang around a long time so it's a bit of a crap shoot where you hit it in the disease cycle.

[Phorester]

And then there's this story:

"His wife was so ugly he made his neighbor check her for ticks."

[jkj]

An article in our morning paper (Knoxville News Sentinel) told the story of a local man, Michael Culver, who tested just barely negative for Lyme disease in 2002, then got progressively worse until he was wheelchair bound, lost use of his major muscles, lost 60% of his ability to breath, and had prepared himself for death.  The neurologist was convinced he had ALS (Lou Greg's Disease).  Finally, as he was about to go on a respirator and have a feeding tube inserted, someone told him about a similar case that turned out to be Lyme disease.   Evidently the mindset around here (East TN) is that Lyme disease is so rare in this area that doctors are unfamiliar with and afraid of making the diagnosis for fear of criticism, and insurance companies will not cover the treatment.

To make a long story short, he finally got treatment for Lyme's disease from specialists in Philadelphia and New Jersey and is no longer under a death sentance.  He had to pay for the treatment himself since the insurance would not cover it.  It turns out that during the treatment, the patient's symptoms typically first get worse (which they did, a LOT worse) since the the bacteria begin giving off toxins as they die from the antibiotic treatment.  At this point, the Lyme disease test finally showed positive so the insurance company was forced to cover the treatment. 

After lengthy treatment, the guy is now out of the wheelchair, and has regained the use of his hands.  Four years after the tick bite he still has some effects of the disease, including cognative (memory) problems and pain in soft tissue and joints, but he has hope for further improvement and most of all, is just happy to be alive.

Some people think that many cases of neuromuscular diseases might actually be misdiagnosed Lyme disease.

The article did suggest to remove a tick as soon as possible with tweezers (don't use a match or other method that can cause the  tick to regurgitate harmful bacteria into the skin), and put it in a small jar of alcohol labeled with date and location in case of future illness.

JKJ