Kids love to be outside, exploring wooded areas and crawling through the underbrush. Your little explorers might get some hitchhikers while they’re out, though. Ticks, one of the great outdoors’ less-welcomed inhabitants, can be a pesky problem, particularly during the warmer months.
Bites from these tiny insects can sometimes transmit Lyme disease or other infections. If you or your children spend time outside, it’s important to regularly check for ticks on skin, clothing, and any belongings that you’ve carried with you.
It’s also important to familiarize yourself with Lyme disease so you can recognize the symptoms when you see them. This is particularly important because treating Lyme at the first onset of symptoms will help to lessen the duration of the disease and possibly reduce future complications.*
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection spread through the bite of an infected tick. In the U.S., the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia mayonii are the cause of Lyme and are transmitted through black-legged ticks, commonly called deer ticks.
A deer tick must bite you and stay attached to your skin to transmit the bacteria, which will eventually end up in your bloodstream. Only a small portion of these ticks carry Lyme disease, and infection is unlikely if the tick is attached for less than 36 hours.
Depending on where you live, your region may have many different types of ticks. If you are bitten by a tick, here’s some information to help identify which type of tick may have bitten you. A black-legged (deer) tick is small and brown, and when it is young it can be as small as a poppy seed.
One of the hallmark signs of Lyme disease is a rash, erythema migrans. It is a red, expanding rash with a bulls-eye center. The rash usually begins at the bite, but can appear at more than one place on the body. The rash is not itchy or painful.
Not having a rash doesn’t necessarily mean that you do not have Lyme. Only about 70-80 percent of people who are infected with Lyme get the rash.*
These include fever, chills, body aches, fatigue, headache, and painful lymph nodes.
If Lyme disease isn’t treated early, other symptoms may appear over the coming weeks and months. These include:
Erythema migrans may appear on other places on the body.
Joint pain and swelling may happen.
If left untreated, the infection could possibly cause neurological problems months or years later. Conditions can include meningitis, Bell’s palsy (temporary paralysis of the side of the face), and numbness or weakness in your limbs.
When diagnosing Lyme disease, our medical providers will conduct a thorough medical history and a physical exam. If you were bitten by a tick and have symptoms of Lyme disease, write down all the symptoms you’ve noticed before you visit your SCC Dallas.
There are also certain laboratory tests that can help confirm a Lyme diagnosis. These tests identify antibodies to the bacteria that spread Lyme. It takes a few weeks for the body to develop these antibodies, though.
Therefore, if you are infected with Lyme disease, it is not unusual to have negative test results if you are tested too early. Often, your medical team may recommend that you begin an antibiotic even if it is too early for diagnostic testing.
This test can determine if there are antibodies to the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. Since sometimes there are false-positive results with this test, is it not the only basis for diagnosis.
Used in conjunction with the ELISA test, the Western blot test looks for antibodies to several proteins of the Borrelia burgdoferi bacteria.
Many pregnant women suffer from morning sickness, which (despite its name) can occur at any time of the day. Typically occurring during the first trimester of pregnancy, morning sickness is also not a true “sickness” but rather the result of fluctuating hormones in a woman's body. Symptoms include:
Because Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria, it is treated with antibiotics.
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