Keeping the Outdoors - OUT!
My son, the guy who rarely spends any time whatsoever out of doors, came home yesterday with a rather nasty welt near his underarm. His friends at school had tried unsuccessfully to remove a deer tick which had lodged itself mercilessly deep under his skin... The joke around school was, "How in the world could he manage to be in contact with a tick when everyone knows he NEVER leaves the computer!?"... My guess is the dog. Anna sleeps in his room every night, and always enjoys a cuddle on his bed... Seeing as she meanders into the treeline behind our house to do her business, I'm sure she picked it up there.
Deer ticks are nasty little buggers... And by little I mean teeny-weeny pin head size devils that can cause all sorts of damage to we human types. We once found a deer tick behind my daughters ear. We cleaned the wound, put antibiotics on the site and kept a close watch. A week later she woke in the morning with a perfect 1/2 bullseye covering the right side of her face. I completely freaked!!!... But was relieved to find out that the bullseye is actually a good thing because it lets you know that 'Lyme Disease' is present. It's those that don't know they were bitten and never see the tell tale 'bullseye' that end up with the debilitating effects of the disease. The cure for my daughter meant nearly a month on oral antibiotics. This morning I took my son to the doctor because the site of his bite was already very red and swollen, plus the head was still embedded in the wound. He wasn't thrilled that the doctor had to spend a good 15 min. trying to scrape left-over tick parts from his underarm... And my morning wasn't highlighted by having to hold an ear-scope light steadily over the wound so the doctor could see the site more clearly... My son will start taking the 21 day dose, 2x a day antibiotic the doctor ordered him this evening and the rest of us will continue feeling like we have something crawling around our body... Oh, and did I mention that my daughter woke this morning to show me a poison ivy rash bubbling up on her arm?
Deer ticks are nasty little buggers... And by little I mean teeny-weeny pin head size devils that can cause all sorts of damage to we human types. We once found a deer tick behind my daughters ear. We cleaned the wound, put antibiotics on the site and kept a close watch. A week later she woke in the morning with a perfect 1/2 bullseye covering the right side of her face. I completely freaked!!!... But was relieved to find out that the bullseye is actually a good thing because it lets you know that 'Lyme Disease' is present. It's those that don't know they were bitten and never see the tell tale 'bullseye' that end up with the debilitating effects of the disease. The cure for my daughter meant nearly a month on oral antibiotics. This morning I took my son to the doctor because the site of his bite was already very red and swollen, plus the head was still embedded in the wound. He wasn't thrilled that the doctor had to spend a good 15 min. trying to scrape left-over tick parts from his underarm... And my morning wasn't highlighted by having to hold an ear-scope light steadily over the wound so the doctor could see the site more clearly... My son will start taking the 21 day dose, 2x a day antibiotic the doctor ordered him this evening and the rest of us will continue feeling like we have something crawling around our body... Oh, and did I mention that my daughter woke this morning to show me a poison ivy rash bubbling up on her arm?
posted by EmBee at 3:22 PM
1 Comments:
eek. yes, it really is better to know about the deer tick tna not too. two of my kids have gone on antibiotics for deer tick bites. beter safe than sorry.
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