Tick bite on 9 year old child with tendency to get all kinds of infections. Worried. (Boston: school, living in)

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by timberline742

I would advise people to follow a medical professional's advice. And good thing there are tests for HIV and TB that can be taken without there being symptoms.


Chances are it was a wood tick though, and that means there is NO reason to worry.


But if you're going to demand antibiotics every time you have a tick, don't go outside, ever. You're going to help foster anti biotic resistant strains of other bugs and harm yourself in the long run.


And no, I haven't been "lucky". I'm just not prone to paranoia.

If you have had that many embedded ticks; have had Lyme without suffering any disability, financial distress or severe loss of QOL (or worse); then YES you WOULD be LUCKY.


The threat of antibiotic resistant strains is very real, but most of the overuse is from treating livestock and by caving into demands by patients for outrageous thing like acne and colds/flus (explain that one to me). The LAST thing we should be worried about treatment for deer tick bites in epidemic areas. I can tell you that if the disease becomes chronic, you will be dealing with A LOT more than the initial 14-28 days of antibiotics.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by massnative71

If you have had that many embedded ticks; have had Lyme without suffering any disability, financial distress or severe loss of QOL (or worse); then YES you WOULD be LUCKY.

No, because they're almost all wood ticks. I rarely see deer ticks (never saw the one that I got lyme from actually). And lyme is very treatable in the vast vast majority of cases. Don't take the "oh no, I have chronic lyme" essays in your local rag as the norm. Listen to the medical professionals.

Originally Posted by massnative71

The threat of antibiotic resistant strains is very real, but most of the overuse is from treating livestock and by caving into demands by patients for outrageous thing like acne and colds/flus (explain that one to me). The LAST thing we should be worried about treatment for deer tick bites in epidemic areas. I can tell you that if the disease becomes chronic, you will be dealing with A LOT more than the initial 14-28 days of antibiotics.

Yeah, okay, tinfoil hat territory. Giving people a bunch of antibiotics because they had some random unidentified tick bite and no symptoms is just straight up garbage public health policy.

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by timberline742

No, because they're almost all wood ticks. I rarely see deer ticks (never saw the one that I got lyme from actually). And lyme is very treatable in the vast vast majority of cases. Don't take the "oh no, I have chronic lyme" essays in your local rag as the norm. Listen to the medical professionals.




Yeah, okay, tinfoil hat territory. Giving people a bunch of antibiotics because they had some random unidentified tick bite and no symptoms is just straight up garbage public health policy.

Apparently you have some reading up to do.


http://www.ilads.org/


https://www.lymedisease.org/

And for children:

https://sites.google.com/site/drjone...bite-treatment



Ignorance is not your friend.

[Beachcomber4]

Go to one of the walk in clinics on Cape.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by massnative71

Apparently you have some reading up to do.


http://www.ilads.org/


https://www.lymedisease.org/

And for children:

https://sites.google.com/site/drjone...bite-treatment



Ignorance is not your friend.

Yeah, I get it, you subscribe to the paranoid sect and embrace ignorance. Got it. No one that is in the medical community is promoting anti biotics for bites of unknown origin with no symptoms. Despite your protestations. This includes your links, which ARE NOT from professional medical groups, but from advocacy groups. This includes your link to a 2008 (ten years ago! so much for recent!) treatment for confirmed embedded deer ticks, which this is not.


OP, listen to a qualified medical professional and follow their advice. Don't live in fear.

[JanND]

Originally Posted by NewfieMama

We went down this road earlier this year when our 3-year-old was bitten by a tick that tested positive for Lyme. Our regular doctor would not treat her prophylactically with antibiotics because the tick was not attached for more than 48 hours. We called maybe 10 local doctors/hospitals/urgent care centers to find a doctor who WOULD, but came up empty handed. Boston Children's used to treat prophylactically, but now they have a service where one of their doctors will call your child's doctor and talk with them about whether treatment is needed.

After talking with several doctors, they said the best bet is to go to the emergency room--those doctors will be slightly more aggressive because there is no guarantee that the parent will bring the child back. So if you go to your regular doctor, they will say "keep an eye out for a rash, a fever, etc." and if you notice something, you bring the child back. ER docs are more likely to operate under the assumption that they will only see the child once. Two urgent care centers I called also offered doxy to adults, but not children. But it might be worth calling a couple of urgent care centers near you.

We ended up talking for an hour with our doctor about ALL of our concerns and our options. He didn't want to treat our child with doxy because she's so young and there are adverse side effects of treating a young child with a high dose of doxy, but he did offer to do a titer for lyme around 6 weeks after the bite just to make sure her antibody levels weren't elevated. Our daughter only had the tick for a few hours at most and never developed any symptoms at all, so we opted not to do the titer, but I think it's a good option if you're concerned. Since your child is older, some doctors might be more willing to give the doxy. Just wanted to share our experience.

I would strongly encourage you to do the titer. You know the tick had lyme. Why wouldn't you, even as a precaution.

I had lyme disease....actually you never get rid of it after you have it, because you can have flare-ups. It is a horrible disease. Many people who have RA imo likely actually have lyme.

My symptoms were flu like....but what sent me to my Dr. was that my knees started to crack every time I got out of bed. I thought I had developed R.A. I never got the "rash"

If it hadn't been for a Dr. testing me I would likely not have known in time to take the antibiotics which are still controversial....As it was I had to change Dr's and found a country Dr. who after I showed her the research did give me antibiotics for several weeks.

I recovered slowly.... was very ill still for over a year. It was a slow recovery. I have read and heard horrible stories of folks who never were treated early and have suffered many, many years from the disease.

Mom....Listen to your gut. My experience proved to me that the medical professionals are not of the same mind on how to treat this....And this is 17 years later in my case and they obviously still haven't developed a uniform protocol.

[JanND]

Originally Posted by timberline742

No, because they're almost all wood ticks. I rarely see deer ticks (never saw the one that I got lyme from actually). And lyme is very treatable in the vast vast majority of cases. Don't take the "oh no, I have chronic lyme" essays in your local rag as the norm. Listen to the medical professionals.





Yeah, okay, tinfoil hat territory. Giving people a bunch of antibiotics because they had some random unidentified tick bite and no symptoms is just straight up garbage public health policy.

Unless you've had it you really do not know what you are talking about. I try to make a practice of never insulting someone seeking information about something as devastating as a disease. I would encourage you to rethink that also. Misinformation is worse than no information imo

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by JanND

Unless you've had it you really do not know what you are talking about. I try to make a practice of never insulting someone seeking information about something as devastating as a disease. I would encourage you to rethink that also. Misinformation is worse than no information imo

Yes, which is why I encouraged them to speak to a medical professional, thank you. And I'm willing to bet I know more about this, and have had more dealing with it, than most anyone on this board due to the nature of my work, thank you.


And yes, you actually get cured of lyme, or the vast majority of people do. I know dozens of people who have had lyme (due to working in ecological services) and all have been fully cured. Being fully cured and not having it show up in tests are two different things. Entirely different things. I have tons of bacteria in my blood from past diseases, it doesn't mean I have those diseases still. That strep bacteria from 10 years ago is probably still there, yet I don't have the disease.


And no, they don't know the tick they had, had lyme ,they don't even know it was a deer tick.


You are spreading misinformation. Horrible misinformation right now.


Which is why the OP should consult a medical professional and don't live in fear.

[NewfieMama]

Originally Posted by JanND

I would strongly encourage you to do the titer. You know the tick had lyme. Why wouldn't you, even as a precaution.

I had lyme disease....actually you never get rid of it after you have it, because you can have flare-ups. It is a horrible disease. Many people who have RA imo likely actually have lyme.

My symptoms were flu like....but what sent me to my Dr. was that my knees started to crack every time I got out of bed. I thought I had developed R.A. I never got the "rash"

If it hadn't been for a Dr. testing me I would likely not have known in time to take the antibiotics which are still controversial....As it was I had to change Dr's and found a country Dr. who after I showed her the research did give me antibiotics for several weeks.

I recovered slowly.... was very ill still for over a year. It was a slow recovery. I have read and heard horrible stories of folks who never were treated early and have suffered many, many years from the disease.

Mom....Listen to your gut. My experience proved to me that the medical professionals are not of the same mind on how to treat this....And this is 17 years later in my case and they obviously still haven't developed a uniform protocol.

We didn't for 4 reasons: 1.) she never displayed a single symptom (not just talking about a rash, but also no fevers, no sickness, no red legions of any sort, nothing different about her at all) 2.) as massnative pointed out, the timing for the titers is not easy. If we tested her at 6 weeks and her antibody levels were normal, it just means we could have missed the window and 3.) we didn't want to unnecessarily have blood drawn since it's painful. 4.) the tick was only on her for 3 hours max, which makes the chances of her contracting the lyme miniscule. If we could prophylactically treat it in a way that was harmless to our daughter, that would make sense, but we didn't want to cause her pain without just cause.

[NewfieMama]

Timberline, why so angry about people trying to be proactive and advocate for their kids? You don't care about ticks? Great. You do you. But if the OP wants to treat prophylactically and it doesn't cause any harm, what is the problem?

OP, I went back and looked through my notes. The urgent care places I called wouldn't prescribe doxy for kids 8 and under. If I were you, I'd talk with your pediatrician, but an antibiotic could be an option for you.