Tick-Warning

Oh wow. Is your goddaughter getting better now?
 
Thanks for the heads up.

I never even knew anything about the rash. Thanks for sharing that with us. I always check the dogs seeing that we live in the country. I know we use "protection" but I have still found ticks in the past. Just the other day from being out and about I felt something on my ankle, sure enough it was one of those nast buggers.
 
Hope the little girl is home and doing well now.

Yes, she is home and doing well now.  She's got to be on antibiotics for three weeks. 

Apparently, the tick bite causes some type of weird circular shaped rash on your body.  The few people I knew that got bit and had Lyme disease were not really sick and the rash was behind the knee.  I never really took it that seriously because the people I knew that had it still worked and functioned, etc. 

But, it can be really serious.  Thanks for asking about her, she's such a cool kid, 12 going on 20! 

Anyone( human ) with a tick thats been imbeded or attached for more than 4 hours should begin a round of antibiotics. Most of us dont know how long a tick has been attached when we find it, so treatment is the safer option.
 
Check with your local primary care physcian but thats our protocol in our office.
 

There are actually several different tick-borne diseases that people can get and they don't all present the same symptoms.  I had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever last fall and had a barely discernable lacy rash, plus the achy flu feeling.  Fortunately I had picked a deer tick off me and marked it on the calendar so I could tell the doctor exactly when, just in case.

Ehrlichia and babesia are a growing concern around here.  It's been a problem among dogs for a while, and now I'm hearing more and more people getting it.  The vector for these organisms is any tick at all, not just the deer tick.  There's even a form of Erlichia that you can get from exposure to stagnant water.  Erhlichiosis and babesiosis both present more neurological symptoms:  headache, vertigo, muscle atrophy, tingling and numbness of extremities, nausea, even seizures - plus the other classic tick disease symptoms, but they may or may not be present until the victim is very acutely ill.

Where we used to live, the ticks were getting resistant to Frontline, and that's all I can use on my dogs that swim and jump in buckets every time they work.  Fortunately, I'm sure that's not going to be a problem here.

Wow, thanks for posting guys, good information.
 
Is Frontline Plus still the way to go for Willow?  I'm most concerned with her getting them and passing them to me or DH.  I think that's how we'd get them if we were to get them.  And, with all  the fur she's got I really need a reliable medication. 

I belive Frontline kills ticks immediately the moment they bite so there's no risk of them falling off and moving to humans.  I know that when we first put Frontline on our dogs we'd find all these dead ticks lying around the house - gross sure, but also somehow satisfying []   
 
I also would like to extend a warning to everyone in tick country, particularly northeastern US.  I don't know about other areas of the country, but I do know that up here (I'm in southern MA), Lyme disease is running rampant.  At the vet office I found out that over 50% of dogs tested positive for Lyme (doesn't mean they have it, just that they've been exposed to it), including both of my own dogs who were put on medications for it.  Last year my mom developed a strange rash on her back - red and inflamed, and felt extremely tired and exhausted to the point where one day she just stayed in bed all day (VERY unusual for my mom who normally can't even sit still through a movie), and when she went to the doctor they finally decided it was shingles and she was put on medication for it.  When the rash spread and crossed her midline, the doctors realized it wasn't shingles and openly admitted that they had no idea what the heck it was.  She was sent to another doctor who took one look at it and announced, "Oh, that's Lyme".  My mom has heard of I think at least 2 other people who were misdiagnosed with shingles first when it was Lyme and someone else who had it but the tests kept coming up negative - took them 3 tests to finally figure it out.  Apparently doctors around here were initially clueless as to Lyme symptoms, but I hear they're getting a lot better due to the amount of cases they're seeing.
 
My mom's pretty convinced that there are tons of people out there walking around with Lyme who don't even know it yet...when she got it she just thought it was a natural aging process, getting tired...[8|]
 
If you pull a tick off yourself, tape it up and SAVE IT.  If you do develop any kind of symptoms, having the tick will be very helpful for testing.

Interesting, we are in RI, so not far from where your mom is.  And, also my goddaughter's rash was on her back.