Infection from a tick

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annie oakley
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Infection from a tick

Post by annie oakley »

Found a tick on my left scapula Satueday night. Mike pulled it off... :party: :yikes: I hate ticks!!!!! Any way.....I stayed home from work Monday witha baaddd!!! headache. Tuesday all day my head hurt and that bite area itched,. When I got home it was as round as a lemon , red and itchy. Mike takes a look and says Honey you better go to the doctor. So Here Is my doctor experience....... I go to see if my primary can see me around 8am....Pimary won't be there til 10am and is booked tight.....hmmmmm! So I go to the emergicare center....big mistake!!!!! Dr there says" Looks Like you are either getting (GETTING) an infection or Lime desease" I say Which is it? He says well you don't have this symptom but all the others. :hyper: Hands me a RX for an antibotic (Doxycycl) I asked him if my headache could be a result of the infection...he says don't know. :banned: So I pd left and emediatly went to my primary dr's office. To make a long story short....My primary's head nurse heard my story and said she was putting me in a room (why coouldn't they do that the first time????????? I got a shot (forgot the name ) for Infection and Lime desease and the doxycycl. Shot was "just in case" he says. The nurse was horrified at what the first doctor says. Gee was I happy with it NOOOOOOO! Anyway It's a bit sore and a bit itchy, but I have itch pills. Oh Boy! This is the first time a tick has caused an infection. It looks like a piece of flesh is missing right where his head was. Anyway tha's howm I spent wednsday Love Ya All Oma
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tex
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Post by tex »

Hi Oma,

Well, that certainly didn't sound like much fun. Sorry you had to spend your day that way, but I'm glad you finally got all the bases covered, just in case. That's sort of an uncommon place for a tick bite, so you might have overlooked it for a day or so, and that could be why it got infected.

I hate fire ants, (about a dozen of them stung me today, when I picked up a tree limb, before mowing the lawn), but the little devils are good for something - they seem to have eradicated all the ticks around here.

Hope it doesn't bother you much longer - it's already caused you more than enough aggravation.

Love,
Tex
:cowboy:

It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by starfire »

I don't blame you for hating ticks!!! To my knowledge, I've never had one bite me and I hope I never do. They are mean little creatures......and so are fire ants. I've been bitten by them before and they are just about the quickest little pests I've ever seen. They can cover you up almost before you know it.

There have been warnings that the "killer bees" have made it to our county. I hope I never have a run-in with them.

Love, Shirley
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Post by Polly »

Oma,

Ticks are no fun at all! I am one who has an immediate allergic reaction to tick saliva - maybe that's what you get too (but then yours also got infected). Lyme disease usually takes longer to incubate before giving symptoms. And the CDC says it takes at least 24 and maybe even 48 hours for an attached tick to transmit Lyme disease, but of course, we usually don't know how long the tick has been there. And it can take weeks for the Lyme blood test to become positive.

Why am I aware of all of this, you ask? Well, it was exactly this scenario that started my MC in the first place, I believe. I had a tick bite with a reaction similar to yours. Like a dummy, I self-treated with 5 weeks of doxycycline, thinking that if it were Lyme, I'd nip it in the bud. I got MC (from the antibiotics, I'm sure) and a later Lyme blood test was negative, so it was not Lyme in the first place. Sigh.

Anyway, good luck!

Love,

Polly
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annie oakley
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Post by annie oakley »

Hi Polly....I really am glad you said that...I won't worry too much, doctor said to come back in two weeks unless it gets worse then of course sooner. My doc tests my blood frequently

Tex....Fire ants are nasty too. Are you swelled up at all? I emadgine like us being out on the land you get bites all the time from something. Love Oma
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Post by hazel »

but Polly said that the medicine that you have (doxycycline) is the same medicine that made her sick. Did you just get that in the shot or are you still taking it? Sorry that tick got you. That's ironic what Tex said about the fire ants keeping down the ticks, and then he got bitten by the fire ants. I'm glad we made it home from the west unbitten.

Hope you're feeling okay.
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Post by tex »

Oma,

I don't swell from fire ant venom, I just get those little blisters, like everybody else. It's a good thing I'm not allergic, because I get stung pretty often.

You're right about getting bit a lot, out in the country. A couple of weeks ago, I cleaned out an area in an old barn, that had a lot of spider webs hanging everywhere, (it would have made a good Halloween movie set). I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and leather gloves, and I never felt any spiders, (or anything else), crawling on my hide, but that night, when I undressed to take a bath, I noticed that I had about a half dozen bites on each arm, right where the sleeves have that long slit, along the forearm. There were also a few bites on my rib cage, shoulders, and various spots on my legs. By then they had begun to itch like mad, and they continued to itch for about a week, then they disappeared, with no ill effects. I'm mighty lucky that there weren't any brown recluses in the bunch. LOL.

Love,
Tex
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Post by starfire »

Tex.....I'm mighty lucky that there weren't any brown recluses in the bunch

Boy, I'd sure say so!!!

I believe I've only been bitten by a spider once and I don't know what kind it was (didn't see it), but my foot swelled up and it really hurt to walk. It lasted 2 or 3 days. Don't want another one.

Love, Shirley
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber"
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annie oakley
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Post by annie oakley »

Tex......We cleaned a glass plant out one time while doing construcrion....we were(8 of us) standing around watching a piece of machinery being moved. This plant was dirt full of webs and leaves. Someone from one of the forklifts yelled to me to grab a wood block and throw it to him. There was alot of pieces of wood around. So I looked and right beside me there was a piece of wood. As I bent to pick it up several leaves next to it moved. I stopped and looked....there was the biggest brown relcuse spider I have ever seen in my life. I jumped into the arms of a fellow contruction worker just like in the movies, he said to me RJ does this mean we're dating now. That spider had to be twice as big as a 50 cent piece. Love Oma
May I be more compassionate and loving than yeterday*and be able to spot the idiots in advance
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hazel
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Post by hazel »

oh my gosh. I looked up brown recluse spider on Google images and they showed pictures of the spiders and of the bites. AAAAAAAAACK. Ticks and fire ants have to be better than that.
kathy
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Post by Pat »

Tex,
Next time you get bit by a fire ant put some apple cider vinegar on it. I have soaked a piece of paper towel and laid it on the bite and for some reason you won't get the blister and the spot it does make will go away much faster. I put diatomaceous earth ( from the feed store, food grade quality) on our lawn and NO FIRE ANTS. It is non toxic and works for all kinds of bugs. Put it directly on the mound and in no time the mound will be gone! Stir up the mound with a stick, sprinkle a hearty dose on it. I also sprinkle it around the base of the foundation of our house. Good stuff! And non- toxic! Do not get pool grade DE. Get food grade.
Pat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth Also check out www.dirtdoctor.com
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tex
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Post by tex »

Pat,

Thanks for the tip on the diatomaceous earth. I've heard of people putting it in their yards to keep fleas under control, with a yard full of dogs, but I never thought about using it for fire ants.

About ten to fifteen years ago, when we used to store a lot of food corn in our grain tanks, we treated the empty tanks with diatomaceous earth, before putting the corn in them. It's ground up seashells, but I never realized that there was more than one grade. I'm guessing that what we originally used is now called food grade, because it was as fine as the finest flour. We would pour it into the aeration fans, (which sucked air into the tanks at the bottom), and when the vents at the top of the tanks looked as though they had smoke pouring out, we would stop, and turn the fans off, and the tanks would be completely coated on the inside, with a fine layer of diatomaceous earth. I agree, it's good stuff. It's even approved as an organically certified pesticide.

Thanks,
Tex
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Post by tex »

Kathy,

You're right about the recluses - they're really bad news. I've never been bitten by one of them, but we have a neighbor who got bit twice in one year, while cleaning out closets in their house.

I guess they can be anywhere in the country. I have a buddy who got bit on the leg, while sitting in a hotel room in California, last year, and it wasn't some cheap joint - it was one of the big name hotels.

Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by annie oakley »

Mike and I worked with a guy that got bit on very privet place. They mangaed to save that part of his anatomy. Love Oma
May I be more compassionate and loving than yeterday*and be able to spot the idiots in advance
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Post by tex »

Wow! I'll bet that was fun.

Love,
Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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