I despise them. I can say I hate them and I never use that word. But I am so sick of them munching on my children. Erynn has had four ticks this year. Yes, FOUR! I've pulled off three of them, John pulled off one. Well, almost. He left the damn head stuck in her so that was just buckets of fun trying to get it out of her. Poor thing was traumatized. Of course it was the first one which paved the way for Mommy quite nicely. Once I removed the second and showed her how it should have been done in the first place she's been much less reluctant. Now, before you jump to conclusions, I don't let my kids go frolicking off through the woods looking for these stupid things. I have yet to figure out how the heck she keeps getting them. They steer clear of the woods around our house. But they keep finding her!
Now Ryan - we never even SAW a tick on him. But he started complaining of a headache last Wednesday night. I didn't think anything of it, just gave him some tylenol and sent him off to bed. Thursday I had a work function (okay, okay, it was a social hour....fine) and I got home late. Friday we went left for our glamping weekend. He felt warm so I gave him some meds before bedtime. Saturday I noticed this rather large rash on his lower right side. But it definitely didn't look like a bullseye. Aidan got Lyme's two years ago and it was clear as DAY that he had a bullseye. Ryan - nope. I thought for sure he had been bitten by a spider at some point. His bite actually looked more black and blue in the middle. But over the course of the weekend he still complained off/on of a headache and still had a temp that went up and down. When we got home on Sunday John took him to the minute clinic at CVS (a local drugstore) to get it checked out because, of course, everything is closed on Sundays. They looked at it there and said while the bite didn't look like a clear bullseye they definitely thought he needed to be seen by Urgent Care at the hospital. So off they went. John and Ryan were at the hospital for a little over 2.5 hours. In that time Ryan's temp went from 98.3 to 101.3. They saw the rash, listened to his symptoms and said they absolutely, 100% think he has Lyme's. They didn't want to do a blood test because this soon it would most likely give a false negative. He will be on 1200mg of abx for the next 21 days. I need to take him to our Ped in a week for a formal blood test to confirm but the ER doc again said she is positive after looking at the bite, the rash, watching his temp and hearing his symptoms. My poor little bub. He's taking it like a trooper though. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that just one round of abx knocks it out of him. Aidan had to go on two rounds, for John it took three. Maybe it's different in adults? Who knows.
Moral of the story - please please please check your kids super closely for these damn ticks! I know we never saw the one on Ryan and Erynn, who we've pulled the ticks off of, hasn't had any issues or symptoms but you just never know. It's so damn scary!!!
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