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Ooooooo! You found a tick on your dog! Or worse, on yourself or your child! This has to be one of the grossest experiences, and in the light of the Lyme disease possibility it is one of the scariest, too! Well, maybe I’m exaggerating on the scary part, but you can’t be too careful. Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that is carried by a few types of ticks and is more concentrated in certain parts of the country. The states that are listed as “endemic” areas for Lyme disease are New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.
Well—first off—forget about what Mom and Pop taught you. My Dad used to hold a match to the tick—to the horror of our dog, Tippy. The theory behind this procedure is that the nasty critter (the tick of course) would feel the heat and back out of the kitchen, loosing his bite and releasing his claws of his own free will (I’m not being politically incorrect here, calling the critter a “he.” The male tick is the one that attaches and snacks on your life blood. The female is also a clingy little thing, but she doesn’t attach for the snacking purposes). This
"hot seat" technique would be used instead of yanking him out and leaving the head in there to cause infection and be gross. If the trial by fire failed the next thing Dad did was to smother the nasty bug in mineral oil. Forget all this! The new “approved” tick removal poopoo’s the use of both of these methods. The smoldering match method is just plain unsafe, painful and could be a source for infection. The smothering method is less safe, in that the tick can regurgitate your blood and whatever toxins that he has mixed into that cocktail, back into your bloodstream—and that can make you sick.
The new, accepted, way to dislodge that tick is to go at it with sterilized tweezers. Assuming you have tweezers handy, swab them with alcohol or at the very least sterilize them over a flame. You will also want to try to swab the bite area with alcohol, but don’t smother the tick. AFTER the tweezers cool down, go at the tick more from the side, than the top. Try to get the tweezers between the skin and the tick's jaws, and gently pull, maybe moving the tweezer a little with a side-to-side motion if it isn’t budging. The main ingredient here is patience. A steady pull over a few minutes time, will usually tire out the tick enough to release its grip. Be gentle, yet firm. You don’t want to yank the tick’s body from his head and create a bigger problem. There are opposing opinions on what to do if this does happen. Some folks believe that you should pick the mouth parts out like a splinter, some say leave it in and your body will expel them on its own. If this does happen, I would suggest keeping the area clean and calling your health care provider for further instructions.
If you are out in the woods and don’t have a first aid kit with you, or tweezers at the very least, use a paper napkin, or whatever you have to cover your fingers while you try to gently dislodge the little traveler from his host. Make the point of pulling at the skin, not on the tick's body. Try not to crush the tick while pulling it out. If you don’t have a bottle or container you can seal it in for possible analyzation, crush it with something other than your fingers and then totally dispose of it. Ticks are very hard to kill, and they have a way of bouncing back to bite again.
Be sure to train your children to seek out an adult to help them remove a tick if they discover one on their body. If you are bitten by a tick, call the doctor and see if there is a need to worry about Lyme disease. He may want you to have the tick analyzed to see if it was carrying the disease. In most cases, however, you won’t need to worry. If you would happen to notice a small rash on your body in the next few days, call your doctor. Lyme disease is only serious when left undiagnosed and untreated for a long time. It can be very a debilitating disease, but not life threatening. If treated with a simple course of antibiotics, in its early stages it is very curable.
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