From the Cleveland Clinic
A friend recently mentioned that her fingers and hands were stiff and sore, something she attributed to gardening with a bit of arthritis thrown in for good measure.
Her symptoms persisted, and she started getting worried that something else was going on. It was. She found a tick on her back, developed a low-grade fever and ended up in the emergency room.
It was too early to check for Lyme disease, but she’s been watching for a tell-tale bullseye rash (that can appear anywhere on her body), and was hoping her symptoms, with help from antibiotics, would eventually go away. Ticks, she later learned, carry a plethora of diseases, not just Lyme disease, and many of them can make you feel lousy.
Maybe Lyme disease has a better publicist, since that’s the one most familiar to us. It’s spread primarily through the bites of blacklegged ticks. But when you find a bloated tick attached to your skin, who’s looking at legs?
Any tick encounter should be taken seriously, as the situation with my friend illustrates.
“We start with clothing, making sure the clothing is tucked in, good fitting socks, pants, long pants, long-sleeve shirts and then repellents are very effective, ” says Christopher Bazzoli, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic.
When it comes to checking for ticks, you should examine every part of your body, including your head. Ticks tend to like moist, warm areas. For example, under the arms or the back of the knees. If you do find a tick, Dr. Bazzoli says to use tweezers to remove it. And make sure you get as close to the skin as possible when you grab it. That way, none of it is left behind.
Once you get a good grip on the tick, pull straight up. If you don’t get all of it, you can remove the rest with the tweezers,” he says.
“After we remove a tick, there’s now a break in the skin, and, just like any other break in the skin, we need
to be careful to prevent a secondary bacterial infection. And so, washing that area with warm and soapy
water is really important,” Dr. Bazoli says.
Tell your doctor if you notice any concerning symptoms, like a rash, fever, headache or fatigue. He reminds pet owners to check their furry friends, too. They could unknowingly bring ticks back into the house after being outside.
