cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1116242
Woke ticks are out to turn the US South into soyboys
(did I do that right?)
cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1116242
Woke ticks are out to turn the US South into soyboys
(did I do that right?)
I think its crazy how many people get ticks where they go unnoticed long enough for it to bury and reach your blood. I wanna say it’s a full 24 hours before that happens and even then idk how much it takes before this will effect you since even things like limes disease means it needs to be in you for even longer.
Idk about others, but I have had my fair share of ticks, but thankfully, never one go unnoticed long enough that it broke through. People really should check more. Showering is a great time to discover if you may have one on you.
I’ve been bitten by ticks many times, sometimes at once (from playing with a family friend’s dog). They’re surprisingly light for such a large creature.
You haven’t lived somewhere the ticks are really bad then.
There is a point especially with ticks too small to see with a negative eye that you will simply not catch them all even if you catch 99% of them.
I honestly am not sure if I live in a bad area or not. During peak times, spring and fall, I will find several on me and the kids per year and a bunch more in the house, which were most likely dragged in by our dog. I feel like it’s a lot more than some people, but it could be worse. I have never seen any that are that small, thankfully.
Nope, you don’t.
In southern new england US, walking 100 feet from my car to the door of my mom’s house you can reliably get a tick from close mowed grass. Granted the area is coastal wetlands, but the density of ticks is incomprehensible.
It is one of the reasons I moved away, ANYTHING you do outside you immediately have to take a thorough shower if it is in nature (wait what is the point of being outside without nature? I know). That means you have to compartmentalize your outdoor work/play so it only happens in one chunk that you can then decontaminate yourself from with a shower and tick check after.
Even still though, you can’t be perfect with it and if you have outdoor pets you are fucked too.
I am not joking, I have pulled countless ticks off me and gotten lyme disease several times along with everyone else I know from that area. You get very very very good at tick checking and mitigating ticks getting on you (at this point I know the feeling of a tick crawlng across my leg hair and can catch them just by the feeling of them crawling up my leg when I am lucky), but you just can’t be perfect.
If this sounds disgusting and ridiculous, yes, yes it is.
I am not talking about the ocassional tick, I am talking about EVERY time you go into the woods you come back COVERED in ticks. This isn’t hyperbole, they genuinely get this bad in certain areas especially in the vicinity of wetlands.
Jesus Christ this sounds awful. How long is tick season?
I got a tick bite. And I didn’t even notice it. It was right on my arm. So it’s not like I’ve just been sitting around feeding the fucker for the fun of it.
As the doctor told me. They can be very tiny, they latch on, and then you accidentally rub it off, never knowing it was there. And during that, it regurgitated and that’s why you see the giant tick bite mark.
The real question. Is why people see a giant hollow red circle and just ignore it. It’s a very distinctive mark, I don’t know how you could miss it, unless it’s on the back of your thigh or back. Go to the doctor, get penicillin. That’s it.
And these days, if you know you live in a high risk area, you can get vaccinated.
I never saw any distinctive skin signs after being bitten.
Then you probably removed it without making regurgitate. Which is good. Point is. If you see the bullseye. You need penicillin.
So that’s how you tell. Well, that’s good to know.
I’ll tell you why. Because it’s fucking expensive.
I had what looked like a classic “bullseye” tick bite (several, actually). People told me “run, don’t walk, to the ER”. So I did.
The ER doc told me it was probably fine but I should see my doctor. $600. They had the gall to bill me $600 for telling me to go see a doctor. And that’s with “good” insurance.
I still have no idea what caused those marks.
I’m not gonna justify a $600 bill for a doctor to prescribe penicillin. But $600 less in your wallet is far better than borreliosis.
And what kind of doc saw your bullseye mark and said “it’s probably fine”. That’s just incompetence. If you have the bullseye mark, you’re not fine. You need penicillin or you risk borreliosis.
Anyhow. My bill was $20 for the visit and about $12 for penicillin, 3 grams a day for 10 days.
Yeah, I was pretty freaked out. But on that part, I assume they just knew better than I did. To me it looked a lot like tick bite pictures I found on the internet, but I’m certainly no expert. I saw my GP ASAP after that and he didn’t think it was from ticks either. Maybe it was some other kind of bug bite, or an allergic reaction to some other woodsy thing. No way to know, since it all went away on its own in the end.
I’d advocate for erring on the side of caution, but I totally understand why people instead err on the side of not getting fucked over by medical bills.
As a kid, I had a ticket on the top of my head just a bit back of center. Couldn’t see it in a mirror, didn’t feel anything weird right away. My mom noticed it at some point, but we had no idea how long it had been on there at that point. I was between 6-8 IIRC.
I always figured it’s a sensory thing, different levels of skin sensitivity. I’m highly sensitive, so I imagine there are people who are much less sensitive. For me, I get tickled very easily (and I absolutely hate it.) Any light touch can trigger it. A gentle caress by someone’s fingertips makes me want to jump out of my skin. Lately my skin’s even become more sensitive to chemical irritants. I can’t use the bandaids my boyfriend bought (which are pretty average and of a standard brand) because the glue in it now gives me a rash.
But the benefit of this sensitivity (and, I suspect, the reason this hyper-sensitivity was maintained in humans at all) is that I can feel ticks and most other bugs almost immediately. I’m not perfectly immune - they are sneaky little fuckers. Sometimes a lucky one is able to sneak onto my scalp undetected for a bit. I became aware of that after the last time it happened, so now I brush my hair and feel around my scalp as part of my “tick check” routine.