Is this a tick bite?

Family, Education, Health and Pets
42

I got several ticks along the years – the last one, climbing (in February!!!) in Ticino.

For info -only 40% of the ticks in this latitude carry Lyme disease. The northern you go in Europe, the higher the % of ticks carry the disease. In the south of Europe, the disease is much less spread.

And also, only 50% of the actual Lyme disease-infected bites show the bulls-eye. i.e. you could be biten, not have the bulls’ eye, and still get Lyme disease.

If you’re (like us) the one who go as much as possible in nature, I would suggest get the kids vaccinated for encephalitis. it is a double vaccine (if i remember correctly; day 1 and day 30), with no side effects which you re-vaccinate every 10 years.

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43

ONLY 40%? Seriously?

I removed the ticks from my family members about 7 times. Luckily, only one tick (from Germany) was Lyme infected. I cannon imagine what would if almost any second bite ended up in Lyme decease.

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44

Thanks.

I just learned about tick-borne encephalitis present in all cantons save GE and TI. No treatment available :frowning:

info from Swiss government

45

They (your family doctor or the praxis you visit) usually recommend you to have this vaccine done if you’re living in the German-speaking cantons. But there’s no vaccine against Lyme, so you have to be careful anyway…

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46

In my first year here (2002) I ended up in hospital with bacterial menangitis, most likely from a tick I got whilst hiking or mountain biking. With a 10% mortality rate, that was scary.

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47

Of course, put attention to ticks. Anyway, Lyme disease is treatable. Not to minimize it, but docs can do something.

If I understood well, all can be done for the virus caused encephalitis is IV hydration and prayer.

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48

I know one person who died from this. Now I have to check/remind myself whether we are vaccinated against this.

49

Check the kids vaccination records especially. The tick borne encephalitis vaccine is recommended for anyone aged 6 and upwards so if they are still young they probably won’t have been offered it. That’s the recommended minimum age but it is possible to get it done earlier.

50

you can have an antibody test made also, that will tell you if you’re or not protected

51

Yes but the longer you wait after the bullseye appears the greater the chance of symptoms (joint pain, nerve damage) persisting. Once you have the bullseye (or anything approaching that as it doesn’t always follow a clear patten) you need treatment reasonably quickly..

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52

That’s right, although it takes some time for the antibodies to appear in the body which impacts when it is useful to do the test.

53

I had a bite like this on the back of my neck a few years ago, it was really itchy and I felt unwell (bites give me a terrible headache and I feel sleepy). My local chemist looked at it, said it was a horse fly bite and not to try to squeeze or scratch it. I was given a cream for it but it took 3 weeks to clear. Prior to that I sustained a bite on my eyelid walking along my street that required a doctor’s appointment.

20 years ago I was bitten on the ankle by a false widow spider on holiday in England at the Lake District. My foot and ankle swelled to 3 times their normal size and were red hot, so I had to see a doctor in an emergency. He gave me antibiotics and drew a line round the area with marker pen, told me if the redness started moving beyond that mark to get myself to A and E immediately as I could be in danger of losing my foot. We ended up cutting short the holiday and driving home as I couldn’t walk and I was ill for 10 days after.

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54

My husband had no bullseye nor anything vaguely resembling one. He had no visible bite or anything.
Luckily for him our GP at the time was quite on the ball and knowing that we had just come back from several months in a high risk Lyme disease of the US decided to test him anyway.
He was positive for Lyme disease and started the antibiotic treatment immediately and has suffered from no lasting effects from it.
Ticks and Lyme disease were pretty much unheard of in Europe back then although there were ticks in Belgium and we were very careful of them at scout camps as they were becoming more and more prevalent.
He was very lucky that the GP tested him.

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55

Britain has had a number of cases of Lyme disease over the past few years.

56

This should be a warning not to go to Australia. Crocodiles, spiders and snakes. They all bite and they are lethal. If they don’t get you there, gthere is always a MIL serving up mushroom dinners…

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57

I would be terrified of things either crawling or slithering out of toilets if I went to Australia :scream:

58

You’ve got more chance of being wiped out by an 80 tonne B-Double.

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59

The only time I’ve dozed off at the wheel was when driving across the Nullabor.
We saw hardly any traffic over the two days.
Guess what was coming the other way when I nodded off and drifted into the oncoming lane?

60

They are just teeth with wings. You can actually feel them taking a lump out of you. Barstewards.

61

I often suffer from the bites of horseflies while walking in the mountains, and sometimes half of my leg is swollen, but it looks very different from tick bites. It’s more like a mosquito bite but of bigger degree. The swollen area can be very large and is pink but never red, and is more or less round with a smooth edge.