i was bitten by a deer tick yesterday.

please help to calm me down. i'm kinda freaking out about it.

i have a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning.

what are my chances if contracting lyme disease? fuuuuuuck.

pretty sure people only got lyme disease in the '90s

Elmo, no!

also: how the fucking fuck did a deer tick manage to bite me IN THE CROTCH AREA? fucking nasty pervert parasite motherfucker

dear miss hoover, you have lyme disease

Oh god, thisisbad thisisbad thisisbad

ticks crawl to warm places--armpits, crotchal areas

"In most cases, the infection and its symptoms are eliminated by antibiotics, especially if the illness is treated early."

is it? i think way way more people get bit by ticks than get lyme disease. right? they don't all carry it. xxp

I think you are not in much trouble if you get onto it immediately like that.

kkvsg: YOU ARE NOT HELPING

same thing happened to me back in '89 (er minus the sensitive location). I freaked out for a while, got the test, didn't have it.

for a minute I thought you had been attacked by the PVD indie band...

elmo you're doing the right thing, going to the doctor right away. also are you sure it bit you

how's the tick doing?

The worst thing you face might be feeling yucky from strong antibiotics.

Got this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythema_chronicum_migrans

i didn't get anxious about this until i googled "deer tick bites" about a half hour ago -- i know i should be a-ok if i respond promptly but still

its def not a sure thing scenario (or even close) - i pulled about 15 of these off henry a week ago and was completely flipping out about it, and his bloodwork all came back negative, so it isnt quite as sure thingy as people tend to think.

a couple of things i learned that might help to calm you down:

deer ticks only have the virus if they have bit an infected deer mouse before they bite you, which is why the incidence is a lot rarer than peeps think. also, the disease isnt released into the bitten person (or dog) until at least 24 hours of it being on you, and some people think it might be more like 48.

i got bitten by a tick as a kid, while i was at jewish summer camp. we were watching a movie and i felt something on the back of my neck, and pulled off this big swollen tick (and it didn't come off easily). i thought i'd get lyme disease and was freaking out, and one of the adults was like "chill, kid." and i guess i was fine.

yeah my dog used to get them all the time and they were sometimes on him so long without us noticing that they were dead

also yeah even if you do get it early identification and antibiotic treatment can really change things - most hardcore lymes sufferers were diagnosed long after the early opportunity window.

que, i had to yank the fucker off of my crotchal area. yeah it bit me. i've developed the little signature bite-mark, too.

fyi this was on the inner thigh & not on other terrain, thank christ

did you yank with tweezers? the head could still be in your crotch

i relalize this information may not help you

youre gonna be fine. most important thing is that you're acting fast.

the head could still be in your crotch

Talk about getting head...

for a moment of levity, please note that this is one of the few times where "the head could still be in your crotch" is actually a bad thing

xpost ha see?

i've gotten as close a look as i can (difficult given the site) at the bite and haven't seen or felt any trace of anything still embedded.

a piece of the head could still be in there--always a good idea to use tweezers to pull a tick off. the "bite" could, in fact, be an embedded tick head

i just yanked it out with my fingers in classic "GETITOFFGETITOFFOFMEEE" fashion. not the best way to handle that situation, i know.

i will ask my boyfriend to take a close look at the bite when i get home. thx, que (and everybody)

it's okay, the doctors will probably do some yanking in your crotchal area tomorrow

anybody got a lorazepam?

I find it hard to believe you can't find someone to assist you in inspecting yr inner thigh

xp lol

apparently you're supposed to save the tick after you've removed it, for analysis or something? maybe i'm just overly creeped out by 8-legged crawlies but i don't think i would ever have the presence of mind to preserve my attacker in a jar.

I've been bitten by like dozens of ticks (deer and otherwise) in my lifetime without any serious health problems (that I'm aware of). I kinda just think of it as a normal part of life. I'm sure you'll be fine!

everyone at the office i've asked about this has shared stories of acquaintences who got lyme disease and WERE NEVER THE SAME. thanks a lot, fuckers! ugh.

maybe you'll turn into a tick vampire--it's rare but it could happen

Back in the 80s, my parents would save every single tick that came home on us or the dogs. We had a whole cabinet in the basement of ticos preserved in rubbing alcohol. We kept thm.in jelly jars labeled with the date, the place, and who it was found on.

If you get a tick bite and and shrug it off as no big deal, you're immune -- if you get a tick bite and tense up about it, you CATCH THE LYME. So relax!

My friends indicated that this may have been a little overboard.

For future reference, I remember being taught in boy scouts that if you got a tick you were either supposed to:
A)burn it off or
B)put deodorant on it to smother it so it would need to pull it's head out of your skin to go get air
Otherwise you run a much higher risk of the head staying in and you'd have to deal with whatever possible bad health consequences could result.

http://www.crankycritic.com/archive09/posters/lymelife_ver2.jpg

yeah one of the dog tick related articles spent a good portion saying "yeah i know burning off ticks is supposed to be the way to go but hey dummy your dog is furry which equals uh flammable so plz dont"

Advice would also apply to Elmo's crotch....maybe?

if elmos crotch is as furry as my dog i just dont really know what to say here and maybe that is a topic that should also be addressed

if you tried to burn a tick off a dog the dog would probably get confused and walk away

if you tried to burn a tick off elmo, would he start a thread about it, and would it be titled: help! my crotchals are on fire?

burning is bad news cuz it can make them vomit blood back into yr body, increasing risk of infection (or so I've heard). I usually just go the tweezers route.

iirc my dad used to burn them once they were off the dog because they are impossible to kill but then again flushing would have done the trick, so i think he just liked burning things

how many dogs did your dad flush? your childhood must have been. . .rough

or should i say

ruff?

he burned the ticks

oh

wait the dog did?

this is hilarious

pyro dogs. . . now i've heard everything!

its easy to laugh when you are lucky enough to grow up with a magic dog xpost

pretty sure henry is much much hairier than my junk??

poll

also please do not take a lit match to my mons crotchis or tender thighs under any circumstances whatsoever

I always got ticks off with tweezers if they had barely gotten a grip; otherwise a q-tip full of rubbing alcohol would make them back the hell out in a hurry. It burned on the bite, but not for long, and also seemed like a good move because it disinfected the area.

this is probably TMI, but I used to have a skin tag — a harmless little pimply nub — just above my right armpit. one time last summer I went on a half-day-long hike in the mountains, and when I got home that afternoon I didn't bother to bathe or check myself for ticks. the following afternoon, aware of the earthy odor I'd picked up from the trail, I got ready to take a long shower.

as soon as I took off my shirt, I realized that something had gone wtf. overnight my skin tag had swollen to three times its original size and turned a sickly shade of dark grey. it was beetle-shaped, somewhat numb, and stiff to the touch. on closer inspection, I saw some little black threads wrapped around it. they were wiggling. it took me a couple minutes and countless "eww, yuck!"s to realize that a tick had burrowed itself directly beneath my skin tag, gorging itself with blood and depriving the area of precious oxygen.

now I've always had an aversion to having necrotic flaps of skin attached to my underarms, so I knew I had to get rid of the thing at once. with minimal medical knowledge, I sterilized my Swiss Army Knife scissors in a pot of boiling water. I tied dental floss around the base of the skin tag to cut off the blood supply, and I numbed it with an ice pack. finally I snipped right through the skin tag with my scissors. it deflated like a fleshy water balloon & didn't hurt a bit. relieved, I picked some remaining bits of tick guts out of the wound and did my best to dress it up.

within two weeks, the spot had healed so fully that it didn't even leave a scar. I even felt bold enough to nix the skin tag on my other armpit in like fashion. to this day my body remains blissfully free of all warts, skin tags, and moles. I gained a lot of wisdom and confidence from that bloodthirsty deer tick, and the ensuing Lyme disease wasn't that bad, really (joeks).

in summary, it's probably a good idea to dab some Bacitracin (or other antibiotic cream) on your tick bite just to be safe, elmo. also it's probably a good idea to ignore my last post.

Damn, Ive always wanted to get rid of my annoying skin tags but assumed it would hurt. Mine arent pea sized and full of ticks, tho.

It prob isnt a good idea to slice off moles, though! :/

ok i just spent all day in woods n meadows gonna go check for ticks

btw can we get a summary from someone who know re the controversy regarding chronic lyme decease

u should ask brad paisley for advice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tiPndMqxLQ

dear @therealbradpaisley waht kind of advice can u give me re deer ticks, thx

@ the doctor's office right now, let's guess how many different Rx i walk out of here with. 2? 3?

Hopefully zero. Ticks are not that big a deal!

ill put my money on one antibiotic "just in case"

http://www.ripten.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/dude-getting-dell-doh.jpg

"Dude, yer gettin' Vicodin!"

3 weeks of doxycycline, and a blood screen for Lyme antibodies in 6 weeks.

bummer.

I heard that you can get fucking wrecked if you place doxycycline under your eyelids.

Like, not "omg I'm so high" wrecked but "OW OW OW OW OW OW WTF" wrecked.

Fucking Norwegian mountains.

:-/ you alright?

2 weeks of Doxycycline and a blood test to see if I've picked anything up next week. Apparently the ticks in that area of Norway are also likely to carry tick-borne encephalitis as well as Lyme. So that'd be fun.

I heard that you can get fucking wrecked if you place doxycycline under your eyelids.

Like, not "omg I'm so high" wrecked but "OW OW OW OW OW OW WTF" wrecked.

― Wood shavings! Laughing out loud! (HI DERE), Thursday, April 8, 2010 7:03 PM (5 years ago)

I lolled.

assuming you've got no signs yet, 2 weeks of doxy should be more than enough. generally the prophylactic regimen is a single dose