I live in upstate New York and this time of year, ticks are running rampant. About two months ago, my oldest son found a tick full of blood in the back of his neck. A few weeks ago, I found one embedded in my side. It wasn’t full of blood yet, so it hadn’t been there too long. I’m guessing about 12 hours, so chance of lyme disease is slim since it takes at least 24 hours to transmit it.
I pretty sure my son’s tick was in longer than that. His doctor put him on an antibiotic, just in case. I’m not a big fan of antibiotics for “just in case”, but I guess it’s the lesser of two evils. My father actually had lyme disease and was on very powerful antibiotics for 2 months, which made him very tired.
I was able to get both of our ticks out, but each one had a little piece left in. I took my son to the emergency room. While we were waiting, another mother came in with her son. She had a tick in her shoulder earlier in the day, and her son had a tick in the back of his head. The emergency room doctor removed the piece from my son without a problem.
With my tick, I decided to try a nearby urgent care to get the rest out. I waited 2 1/2 hours before I finally saw someone. They told me they weren’t going to try and get the piece out. It would come out on it’s own. Yeah, I wasn’t too happy I wasted 2 1/2 hours and $20.00 for them to tell me they weren’t going to do anything. I did learn that it’s ok to leave a small piece of a tick in if you can’t get it out.
After my son’s tick, I bought a tick removal tool from amazon and a tick release liquid. I couldn’t get my tick out using the key. Maybe I just wasn’t using it right or maybe it was because the tick wasn’t full of blood. I don’t know. My son’s father got 4 out of 5 ticks out of a dog using the tick key. I used the tick release liquid on my tick and I think it killed the tick. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
To remove the tick, use a great pair of tweezers and squeeze as close to the skin as you can and pull straight out until the tick releases. Don’t squeeze the sack. That could cause the tick to vomit more disease carrying bacteria into you, which is what I hope the tick release liquid did not do.
During my emergency room and urgent care visits, I noticed that the nursing scrubs, the nurses were wearing, are pretty boring. There are websites out there which actually sell scrubs. Nowadays, scrubs come in all sorts of different colors and patterns. If you are a nurse or doctor tired of wearing the same old scrubs, you might want to give http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Women/ a look, and if you go outdoors, watch out for those ticks.
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