The Discomfort Thread

Hard as it may be to believe, but yesterday I got my first ever tick bite ><

I was at the crick hunting for minnows and craws, even caught a good sized water snake. At this time of year, the algae is really coming in and all sorts of seed husks and flower petals litter the water. Whether they're floating in the water and stick to you as they pass by, or you pick them up walking through the tall grass with wet legs, you come out covered with all sorts of nonsense.

I had been home a good two hours before I went to go shower and saw it on my ankle. I thought, obviously, that it was just a husk I missed or millfoil that had dried on. I had to pick at it, which isn't all that uncommon. They really paste themselves on. But after I picked one side off, the other remained. Wtf? So I pulled on it, and it kind of hurt. I shave my legs for just this reason, so pulling out dried algae and pond muck doesn't hurt, and just about the time I thought "how?" it came loose and I looked at it. GD tick!

It burned. Not in like a radiating circle, but a radiating line. Just a hot line running down my ankle. Now it just hurts, like I took a puck to the ankle and got a brush burn on top of it. A bruise-like feeling, but also sensitive to the lightest brush. Fecking ticks.

Suppose I'll just pray for no bullseye and get on with life =/

I got bit in bed last week and it swelled
up the back of my hand and itched like
crazy for 3 days. Spider? Last night I got
bit on my forearm near the elbow and
it's swollen and just plain hurts. WTF?

Quote: Evenbob

I got bit in bed last week and it swelled
up the back of my hand and itched like
crazy for 3 days. Spider? Last night I got
bit on my forearm near the elbow and
it's swollen and just plain hurts. WTF?

I usually attribute those to spiders, as I sure don't have skeeters and deer flies in my house. And the bites tend to be much bigger than a "bug bite", like you said.

I just squeeze em out, same as bugs. They tend to leak more and crust up, but otherwise react the same.

Quote: Face

Hard as it may be to believe, but yesterday I got my first ever tick bite ><

You got me looking up tick removal.

Quote: rxwine

You got me looking up tick removal.

What. In. The. @#$%

I'd rather house a tick on my taint than do whatever they were doing. Bleh. I hate needles. I'd rather have a bone set than get a PPD. All I heard is not to do the burning match because they vomit a bunch of stuff into you if you do. I dunno. This was my first. I just pulled it off. I am surprised how much it hurts, though. The puck shot / brush burn is a dead perfect analogy.

Quote: Face

[What. In. The. @#$%

I didn't enjoy it either, except in that way you find something hard to look away from once you start looking at it.

The match thing may come out of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn book. I think that's where it is famously mentioned.

I don't mind needles, I would have
made a good junkie. It's all in your
head. Nobody cares if they stick
themselves sewing something, but
are terrified of a hypodermic. Which
usually hurts not at all.

Ticks: I previously posted a blog item (photo of a trailside bobcat) from a woman whose life consists of hiking with her dogs, taking photographs and writing about her travels. Each night she examines the dogs for ticks. Yet blood tests confirm they've been bitten by ticks. Its a hazard. Hard to avoid.

3 things about ticks:

*Is Lyme disease endemic in your area? If so or not, that is important.

*Likewise Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, much less likely but much worse to get

*if you know you got the tick off pretty soon after it bit, that's 99% of it for any of these

Quote: link

Arkansas, Delaware, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. (worst states for R.M.Spotted Fever)(note none near rocky mountains LOL)

http://www.cdc.gov/rmsf/stats/

and for Lyme disease, per CDC, pretty detailed map



PS: recently they figured out there is a species of mice that is key to Lyme disease spread

I've been watching for the bullseye. So far, nothing.

But it f#$%ing hurts. Hurts even more today than yesterday. It really does feel like I took a slap shot to the ankle. The brush burn pain is completely gone, but that bruise pain is fresh as ever. Weird.