What Do I Do If I Pulled a Tick Out of My Arm?

 
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SMITTY
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Post by SMITTY » Tue. Jun. 18, 2013 8:47 pm

What pisses me off is I had the Permethrin here when I got bit - just didn't have time to hang all my clothes out on the line, hose them down with the stuff, then wait for it to dry.

Since I treated my clothes, I haven't seen another one.

Cabelas was having a sale on the stuff several weeks ago. Not sure if it's still on, but I got a great deal plus free shipping. Bought 4 bottles at $4 per bottle cheaper than I had paid for it last year on Amazon. 8-)


 
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Post by MarkV » Fri. Jul. 05, 2013 11:58 pm

My wife was diagnosed with Lyme disease two weeks ago. No known tick bite, no bulls-eye rash. We figure she was bitten after spending two days cutting back shrubbery around the house about two weeks before that (she doesn't want me trimming shrubs because I cut them back too far :roll:).

She started feeling tired for about a week, then started flu symptoms--fever, joint and muscle aches, and a bad headache. No sore throat, cough, or head or chest congestion. Aching and headache just kept getting worse.

After three days of trying to medicate with tylenol, she finally decided to go to the doctor. We were driving there in the car when we remembered about her messing around in the shrubs. We live in a development but it's in a rural area and we have a lot of deer traffic through the back yard.

When the doctor heard the symptoms, he took blood to send out to test for Lyme, and immediately put her on tetracycline. They called two days later and said the blood test confirmed she has it. The doctor said when you have the rash only, it's stage 1; my wife is in stage 2 because she had the neurological symptoms and had elevated liver enzymes. Fortunately it didn't progress to the stage VigIIPeaBurner described above--hang in there Vig!!! I know it's nasty stuff--I've been hitched up to my wife 35 years next month and I've never seen her that sick before.

Odd thing is, my wife never had a rash. The doctor said not every infected deer tick bite leaves a rash. She also may have been bitten on her scalp where it wouldn't show.

The doctor said if she'd gone much longer, she'd have had some longer-lasting, possibly permanent neuro impacts, as well as permanent liver and kidney damage. She was also just starting with some facial muscle drooping on one side of her face, but that seemed to go away as soon as the tetracycline kicked in.

My advice to anyone, if you get a deer tick bite, go to the doctor and get tested. Now. If you have a tick bite and a rash, go to the doctor. And most important, even if you didn't see a tick, and didn't get a rash, if you get the "flu symptoms" I described above, without any of the cold symptoms, go to the doctor and insist on a Lyme blood test. This stuff is no picnic.

 
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Post by dcrane » Sat. Jul. 06, 2013 6:59 am

Im sorry to hear about your wife mark :cry: , I remember my nephew many years ago was admitted to a rehab hospital because of Lyme's and the face/eye drooping was severe and horrible! after 10 years he is doing OK but I'm very sure it's effected him and his life to a large degree at this point.

I wanted to post that I did find the best bite healer, anti itch, product after using everything under the sun! My first bite was the worst and its only now starting to heal completely months later after using this new product I got called "100% pure tea Tree Oil" (Ive been putting a few drops each day on the bite and its finally closing up and healing and not itching anymore!

I have not come down with a rash at all and even though I did come down with a cold/cough a week ago, Im functioning fine and im not feeling anything severe enough (like headaches or joint pain) to go to the doctor about, but I am becoming vigilant about doing anything in tall grass or woods anymore. These lil' bastards are just to insidious, evil and hard to even know when their on you to take any risks!

Great advise for everyone to hear to Mark & Vig! and to anyone with a bite that's not healing or itching out of control please get some 100% pure Tea Tree Oil and you will find relief!

 
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SMITTY
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Post by SMITTY » Sat. Jul. 06, 2013 8:55 pm

Yeah ditto on that - hope she comes out of that unscathed!

Mine still look bad, but better than they did. So did the 10 or so other bites I've had the past 3 years. The first bites took almost 2 years to fully heal. Never got any flu symptoms with any of the bites. I've always had fatigue issues, but that's from the asthma.

I've been standing in the sun with a magnifying glass trained on the bite sites a couple times - I figure if anything was living in there, it ain't now. ;)

 
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Post by JohnB » Sun. Jul. 07, 2013 9:39 am

I had Lyme Disease in 2007. No noticeable bite, no rings. Started on a Sunday with Flu like symptoms that got worse as the week went on. Wicked night sweats, chills, a 24 hour a day headache that felt like someone was driving a nail into my skull. My neck hurt so bad I could hardly hold my head up. If I walked up a flight of stairs I needed to lay down for an hour or two to recover. Doctor took a blood test on Friday & on Saturday I woke up with blotches breaking out all over my body. Started on the antibiotics Monday, Tuesday small veins on one side of my face started breaking up & there was minor paralysis on the same side. By Wednesday the drugs were working & I started to improve. Took a good 6 weeks before I started to feel halfway normal again. 2-3 weeks after that I developed Vertigo. Couldn't even drive the car without nausea. This lasted a good year but the severity decreased as each month went by. Testing showed no obvious cause but my doctor felt that it was related to whatever damage the Lyme Disease had done.

I figure I got bit while kayaking in some swamps in R.I. According to my doctor if you are going to get Lyme Disease you're better off having a full blown case like I had as it's the easiest to knock out completely with the antibiotics. As bad as it was I got off easy. Since then I've met people that have had their life destroyed by the disease. Many of these people picked it up years ago when no one knew what they had. By the time they got on antibiotics the damage was done.

 
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Post by dcrane » Sun. Jul. 07, 2013 11:03 am

SMITTY wrote:Yeah ditto on that - hope she comes out of that unscathed!

Mine still look bad, but better than they did. So did the 10 or so other bites I've had the past 3 years. The first bites took almost 2 years to fully heal. Never got any flu symptoms with any of the bites. I've always had fatigue issues, but that's from the asthma.

I've been standing in the sun with a magnifying glass trained on the bite sites a couple times - I figure if anything was living in there, it ain't now. ;)
I hear that Smit :lol: Until I started using this 100% tea tree oil directly on the bite site, I was seriously contemplating burning the site of the bite with a jewelry torch (Just blaze it fast and hot and then let the healing begin because I figured the most severe burn or even gouging out the area with a scalpel would heal 10x faster then this frigging things been going :cry:

The more I hear folks experiences with Ticks and Lyme (I guess there are even other issues too from them we haven't even mentioned hear) the more I'm becoming vigilant and an authority on a subject I never knew the horror of (even without Lyme's a Tick bite is a VERY difficult thing to deal with, with Lyme's it has to be HORRIFIC)!

 
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Post by JohnB » Sun. Jul. 07, 2013 12:09 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrlichiosis This one is more common in dogs but we can get it also. Typically you end up in a hospital on an IV with Ehrlichiosis. Had to treat one of our dogs a couple summers ago. She was carrying it but had no symptoms at the time. She couldn't keep the pills down so we ended up bringing her in every week for 6 weeks for shots. The common (in this area) brown tick can carry this disease.


 
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Post by Rick 386 » Fri. Jul. 12, 2013 10:09 am

Got a chain type email with a remedy for removing stuck on ticks:

Get a cotton ball and put some liquid soap like dishwashing detergent on it. Hold cotton ball on the tick for about 15 minutes. Tick will unhook and then get on the cotton ball. White cotton ball also makes it easy to see the little bastard as he's trying to leave the area.

Rick

 
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Post by JohnB » Fri. Jul. 12, 2013 10:24 am

I wonder why they use dishwashing detergent?? I would think that rubbing alcohol would work much faster if the idea is to kill the little bugger. About 10 years ago I found that a brown tick had buried his/her head in my right nipple! Tried my best to get it off intact but the head stayed in. Had to have my doctor cut it out. :shock: Not fun.

 
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Post by VigIIPeaBurner » Fri. Jul. 12, 2013 12:29 pm

Heres' why this works. You might be familiar with how a spoon full of water will hump up over the edge of a spoon What allows it to hump up is the surface tension of water. The dish detergent is a surfactant. A surfactant changes a liquid's surface tension. Add a little dish detergent and the water won't hump up on the spoon any more. Some surfactants are so efficient that if enough of the surfactant gets into a stream, it will cause the fish to drown. The water contacts their gills directly and doesn't allow the gasses to exchange and the result is the fish can't breath.

Insects and arachnids breath through spiracles in their exoskeletons and not lungs like mammals have. A spiracle is a little pore that has its opening covered with little hairs to keep stuff out of the area where the air exchanges gasses with the critter's blood. Why the dish detergent on the cotton ball works is kind of like how the fish can drown in surfactant treated water. Normally the surface tension of water will not allow the water to make it pass the spiracle's guard hairs. Think of the example of the over full spoon full of water. Add a little surfactant and the water has a lower surface tension and can by pass the guard hairs and start to drown the critter. That's why the tick will back out when you do the cotton ball treatment. It's trying to get out of a place where it can't breath. The dish detergent technique works with killing a lot of different insects like ant and ground bees. Cheap, easy and it's usually right at hand.

Trouble with these treatments is the tick might regurgitate into your blood stream and give you a bigger dose that if you had plucked out a little skin along with the tick. I was told by a nurse familiar with Lymes and tick removal that the best way was to grasp a piece of skin with tweezers that is around the bite area. Pull the little chunk of skin out with the tick and apply some antibiotic ointment to the tiny hole.

 
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Post by franco b » Fri. Jul. 12, 2013 1:27 pm

VigIIPeaBurner wrote:Trouble with these treatments is the tick might regurgitate into your blood stream and give you a bigger dose that if you had plucked out a little skin along with the tick. I was told by a nurse familiar with Lymes and tick removal that the best way was to grasp a piece of skin with tweezers that is around the bite area. Pull the little chunk of skin out with the tick and apply some antibiotic ointment to the tiny hole.
Thanks for another really informative post.

 
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Post by dcrane » Fri. Jul. 12, 2013 6:04 pm

wow... good stuff Vig! I think your right about that regurgitation concept (if you wait for the tick to back out himself you may get that bad stuff that causes lyme's), if you rip the lil' bastard out he does not have time to spit bad stuff into your blood stream :fear: at least I think that's what your saying??? GG

 
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Post by SMITTY » Fri. Jul. 12, 2013 11:36 pm

I just grab and yank .... and from the looks of things the past 3 years that's NOT the correct way of doing it. :lol:

 
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Post by dcrane » Sat. Jul. 13, 2013 6:24 am

SMITTY wrote:I just grab and yank .... and from the looks of things the past 3 years that's NOT the correct way of doing it. :lol:
but maybe that's why you have not got the lyme's, because you don't give the lil bastard a chance to "spit back" the bad stuff into your blood stream :up:

 
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Post by SMITTY » Sat. Jul. 13, 2013 10:55 am

Good point! :D Who knows ....


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