One afternoon, when my two-year old son woke up from his nap and we reconnected, I ran my fingers through his hair and felt a lump. Thinking it was a bit of porridge (it was and remains his favorite styling product) I took a closer look to remove it. That’s when I saw it: black legs STICKING OUT OF MY BABY’S SCALP, a blood-sucking head burrowed into my child’s head.
It was a tick. I was appalled. I was horrified. More than anything, I was furious. This was not something I could deal with, and I let the tick know: “Oh no, not today you f***er! No you DON’T!”
I’m from Massachusetts, which borders Connecticut, the US capital of lyme disease. I learned to check myself thoroughly for ticks in kindergarten. When you’re from where I’m from, lyme disease is a part of your life. Your friends and neighbors have had it and have suffered its complications (several friends and relatives have come down with Bell’s palsy, in particular, a paralysis of one side of the face).
Everyone has a tick story; my personal favourite is my neighbour’s: he’s a farmer, and tough as hell. The man has performed dental surgery on himself for god’s sake, he’s a legend. Last fall he was walking with his friend in the woods around his fields, and upon returning home found more than a dozen ticks on himself. Horrified, he sprinted to his greenhouse, where he stripped and, as you can’t simply squish them to kill them, began smashing them with a hammer. He called his friend and told him to check himself, telling him what had happened.
“Really?” asked his friend, shocked.
“Yeah,” shrieked my neighbour, “I’m sitting naked in the greenhouse now, killing them with a hammer!”
As horrifying as it is to see a dangerous parasite burrowing into your child, it is important not to panic. After all, if your child is very young, he or she has no idea what’s going on; they won’t panic if you don’t give them a reason to, and you’ll have a much easier time getting that tick off if you’re both calm. I breezily told my son that he had some porridge in his hair and that I had to get it out.
I got the tweezers and sat my baby boy on the couch. Here’s what you have to do: use the tweezers to grab as CLOSE to the insertion point as you can, then pull STRAIGHT OUT. Do not twist, do not wrench, do not rip. Pull slow, and pull hard. The prevailing wisdom used to be to smear the tick with oil so that it would remove itself to breathe, but this is no longer considered effective.
In our case, the tick came right out; it was intact, and it was alive. This is the first sign that everything is going to be absolutely fine. It takes time for a tick to burrow deep, and once they do, they’re very, very difficult to remove. My parents have had to go to the emergency room to have ticks removed, where it was still a struggle.
When I saw the tick was intact I was relieved, but only momentarily. I called our pediatrician and my acupuncturist for advice immediately. They were very calm. They asked loads of questions: when was the last time we were outside, was the tick engorged, how had the removal process gone. Basically, they were trying to establish how long the tick had been on his body and whether I was sure it was a deer tick. Lyme disease can ONLY be carried by deer ticks and the disease can ONLY be transmitted if the tick has been on your body for about 48 hours. By then it will be very difficult to remove: its abdomen will be burrowed into your skin, which is what transmits the disease.
If you remove the tick and you believe the head and mouth is still inside your skin, do not panic. So long as the abdomen has been removed, the infection will not transmit.
This is what they told me: lyme disease is dangerous when it’s not detected. It is dangerous when you have been bitten by a tick and don’t know it, and you have problems months or even years later. When you see the tick and you know about it, your outlook is very good and there is very little reason for concern.
If you are showing signs of lyme, they will prescribe doxycycline, a powerful antibiotic, and everything will be absolutely fine. Doxycycline will not be prescribed preventatively, as even if the tick that bit you is tested and confirmed to be carrying lyme, there’s still a very good chance that you haven’t been infected. The antibiotic will not be prescribed to children unless they are showing clear signs of infection: the classic bulls-eye rash (which may appear at the site of the bite or anywhere else), swelling in the joints (in children, this manifests most commonly in the knees), or high fever without other symptoms. If they show any of these signs, doxycycline will be prescribed and it will take the wind out of your kid for a couple weeks, but everything will be fine.
I was instructed to keep a watchful eye on my son and not to worry. Two months later, he is absolutely fine. If it turns out that you or your child has lyme disease, it is not the end of the world or a life sentence, I can’t stress this enough. Modern medicine is a beautiful thing. So is ancient medicine. The reason I called an acupuncturist is because when friends and neighbors had developed Bell’s palsy from lyme disease, he was able to help them get back to normal. He’s treated himself for it twice and knows what to do. (He also restored my hearing when I lost it in one ear from sudden sensory-neural hearing loss, he’s a miracle worker as far as I’m concerned).
When I sheepishly told him how angry I’d been when I saw the tick, he said, “Good! Be angry, be good and furious! Let it change your life by making vigilance a part of it, don’t let it scare you into staying inside, into avoiding nature and wilderness. This intersection of nature and civilization is a part of our lives now, we have to learn to live with it.”
With that, I offer six closing tips:
1. Lyme disease is only carried by the deer tick, but all ticks can carry infections. If you have a tick on you, remove it, identify it, call a doctor, and remain vigilant. The thing about a tick bite is you won’t feel it. A parasite needs the initial latch to be painless, otherwise its host will seize it and remove it. In the summertime my father practically bathes in DEET, he’s still pulling ticks off himself constantly. Regular checks are crucial.
2. Again, lyme disease is only carried by deer ticks, so called because they’re found wherever you find deer. Don’t think this means it’s only something found in the wilderness, our cities are a lot more wild than you think, with deer and foxes everywhere (I’m looking at you, Phoenix Park, you beaut).
3. These days I check my child twice a day for ticks, once at naptime and once at bedtime. It’s more than necessary, but finding one on him really shook me up. Make it part of your nighttime routine, like teeth-brushing. When they’re toddlers, it takes a minute: check them while changing their diapers, and they love being naked anyway. Don’t forget their hair and behind their ears.
4. Ticks are most dangerous at the nymph stage because they’re teeny tiny, they’re harder to spot and better at transmitting infections. The nymph stage occurs in the US around June and July, but with climate change ticks are becoming more prevalent year-round. My son was bitten in February, something that used to be unheard of in frigid New England weather. Go online and download a diagram of ticks and print it out. It should give you sizes and shapes of ticks at their different stages, and will help you identify them. Keep them with your numbers for poison control and your bikini waxer: handy, but not in your face to scare you all the time.
5. The HSE claims that dogs ‘sometimes’ carry ticks. The truth is dogs and cats bring ticks into homes all the time. Most people I know who have lyme also have pets. Sometimes the pets are bitten, sometimes the pets carry the tick into the house to crawl up on the couch and bite you when you have your hand in a bag of Doritos, watching Dance Moms.
6. Check the hard-to-see places: My mom had a tick on the back of her elbow that she didn’t notice until it was engorged. I check my son’s hair with a comb every night. A friend who lives in New York City pulled a tick right off his penis one day, oh yes he did. Needless to say, he was not himself for a few days.
Ani is a writer currently based in New York. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @AniMSarkisian, or at TheSaltyCookie.org.
