The Background

My youngest daughter was sat on the stairs, when my girlfriend suddenly noticed a tick on the child’s thigh.

Disgusted, she removed the tick, and we thought that was that.

That demonstrated two big mistakes.

The first being is that you should never try and remove the tick yourself.

The second is that a tick bite creates a likelihood of developing Lyme Disease - something we weren’t at all aware of.

However, over the next few days my daughter developed an usual ring-pattern around the original bite area, and that set off alarm bells. As we booked a doctor’s appointment, a neighbour mentioned Lyme Disease…

About Lyme Disease

Lyme Disease - Borreliosis - is a nasty little infections caused by tick bites, that if left untreated can develop into a pretty serious illness.

What happens is that a tick, commonly a deer tick, will attach itself somewhere on the skin. It then begins to suck the blood.

The trouble is, the tick can carry a bacteria known as Borrelia burghdor feri.

The longer the tick remains on your skin, it becomes increasingly likely that the bacteria will pass from the tick and into the wound.

And it’s this bacteria that, if it enters the human body, can wreak a lot of havoc if left unchecked.

Important Notes about ticks

Here’s the first point - NEVER attempt to remove the tick yourself. Get an appointment at your doctors and have them remove it with tweezers.

Some doctors will recommend you simply smother the tick in vaseline, and it will drop off within a couple of hours - but if it doesn’t, it needs removing.

It’s important to ensure it’s remove properly by an experienced medical practioner, because if you remove the tick yourself but accidentally leave some part of the ticks jaws in the wounds, it can cause a local infection.

Even worse, though, is that if you try to remove the tick yourself you could increase the chances of the tick passing on the infectious bacteria.

The big problem is that a tick is basically a huge expanding stomach attached to tiny legs and a sharp little mouth - so that if you attempt to remove the tick yourself, there’s a serious danger you’ll simply end up squishing parts of it’s stomach contents into the wound, along with the infecting bacteria that actually causes lymes.

Yes, that may sound yucky - but it’s a very important point to bear in mind.

Here’s the good news - just because you have a tick biting into your skin, doesn’t mean to say it’s going to pass on lyme disease.

Ticks come in 3 stages of growth - larval, nymph, and adult - each progressively larger. The greatest risk of contracting lyme disease comes from the adult tick. The least likelihood of infection comes from larval stages.

So if the tick is very small - about the size of a money spider - then don’t panic, as it’s probably a larval stage - but still get it removed properly.

However, if the tick is large, book an emergency appointment at the doctors as the longer the tick remains attached the greater the chance of lyme disease developing.

Don’t panic, though - if you can catch the issue in the early stages, the chances are that everything will turn out fine with a little medication.

Treating Lyme Disease

The early stages of Lyme Disease are through a course of antibiotics. If you’ve had a large tick removed from your skin then there’s a chance the doctor will prescribe them anyway, as a precaution.

However, not everybody may realise that they’ve been infected by a tick. They may only notice an itchy bite after the tick has fallen off.

However, the bite mark itself is likely to form a pattern very distinct to the early stages of Lyme Disease - something known as Erythema migrans.

What Erythema migrans looks like: a red spot, surrounded by slightly pale skin, which is itself surrounded by a relatively thick rash in a ring pattern. You can see a few images here.

Again, this is a clear warning signal, but as above, treatment with antibiotics will almost certainly clear up the infection.

Left untreated - well, Lyme Disease if allowed to develop into a chronic condition can seriously affect the heart, joints, and nervous system. You can find more information on that here.

The Conclusion

My youngest daughter was fine after antibiotics, and we were relieved to have become aware of the issue.

Six months later, the primary school called - our eldest daughter had been found to have a small tick under her chin.

Because of the previous experience, we knew not to remove the tick ourselves, and also to get her seen to pretty quickly by a doctor, to have it removed.

Because it was only a larval stage it was decided that she wouldn’t need antibiotics, and no Erythema migrans pattern of wounding has appeared.

In the meantime, we enjoy woodland walks, and deer are known to be around. We’re going to be increasingly vigilant over the issue, and especially ensure we try to ensure the children wear trousers when walking through the local woodlands - even if it’s hot and sunny. Because that’s exactly the sort of weather that encourages ticks to breed.