Warning to berzerker attendees

[johnridley]

I pulled a tick off me after Sunday's cleanup, and found some tick parts in the other leg after getting home (apparently I just scratched it off, leaving bits behind). I waited to see if I got the standard rash, which I didn't, but the bite area has been healing very slowly, and in the last 2 days I've gotten some other skin symptoms which could be related and which I've never seen before. On doctor's advice, I'm starting 10 days of antibiotics as a precaution. Over 25% of infected people don't develop the standard rash.

I don't have any other symptoms, but I rarely do even if I know I have a germ in me, so I'm not giving that any weight.

I know at least one other person on site found a tick on them. Ticks can be pinhead sized so you might have one and not find it. They'll drop off on their own after a while but can still infect you.

If you've developed an unusual symptom since berzerker, think about it. Lyme disease is trivial to treat in the first few weeks, just standard antibiotics, but if you don't catch it it can attack your joints and even your heart and can kill you, and if you leave treatment too long it gets a lot harder to wipe out.

Comments

[madtechie2718.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I had various insect bites, but I don't know that they are different to any of the usual ones. Any clues as to how I differentiate one from the other?

Certainly, the few bites I had stopped intching by the next day and cleared up as usual a day or two after that.

I was using Deet, but that doesn't necessarily repel all bugs, does it?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Well, the tick burrows in rather than using a needle, and it stays there for a while. It's going to leave an actual wound instead of an itchy spot. It'll take a while to heal, not just a day for the bump to recede.

Deet is supposed to work pretty well against ticks. They seemed to be creeping up legs rather than dropping from trees; that's no guarantee that they all would be on the legs, but the ones I had and the other one I know about were both on the lower leg.