Deer Ticks 101

I’m loving this beautiful summer weather!  Lots of time is spent outside at the park or a local pool. I don’t know about your family, but we  tend to eat as many meals as possible outside on our deck or front steps.  We just want to savor every moment of warmth in the sunshine here, don’t you?!

A few weeks ago, as I was working at home, I got a phone call from the school nurse.  Usually I don’t worry too much about a call from the nurse but this one was different.   My daughter had a deer tick in her scalp.  Not a wood tick, a deer tick.  She said that when she tried to remove it my daughter starting crying and the whole thing was starting to scare her.  I headed up to the school right away.  I’m not really one to be freaked out about wood ticks, I’m a Minnesota girl, so you know the deal…we are experienced right?  However, when you see or hear “deer tick”, that makes my skin crawl.  This is mainly due to the threat of Lyme disease.  I’ve heard horror stories and with it being more prevelant in these parts, it’s something I think we all should know more about.

After picking her up at school and calming her down a bit, I got online and searched how to remove deer ticks and it’s pretty basic.  Use a needle nosed tweezer and get as close to the head to pull it out without removing the head.  Well, when I went to pull it out, that’s the last thing a tick wants, and wouldn’t you know it the head broke off and it was still in her scalp.  Ew. Ew. Ew.  So, I saved the body and put it on a cotton ball and placed it in a plastic bag.  That part is very painful.  It held on for dear life {should I use a pun there?} and pulled her scalp along with it.

I just decided to head to the doctor rather than calling and wasting my time on the  phone.  When we got to the pediatrician I told the receptionist why we here and the look on her face made me get concerned. They all seemed to move so quickly even though it was busy and the waiting room was full.  The nurse took a look at it and I showed her the body bag {trying to find some humor in this} and told me that we should see a doctor that day and to come back in an hour.  This is when my Momma nerves started kicking in.  In addition, my daughter could sense the vibe the staff was giving us when asking questions.  Their questions included “When did she get the tick?” “How many hours do you estimate it has been in her scalp?” This happened the day after Mother’s Day.  I had gone out with a girlfriend to get a pedicure as a gift to myself, so I had to check with my husband as to what time they were playing outside and where they were.  It was not tall grass, people.  It was short grass at the park and she had been playing hide and seek near some evergreen trees.

Rather than stress you out, I will fast forward to when we finally got to meet with the doctor.  She was so calm from the minute she entered the room, which was very helpful in comparison to the reactions we got that day.  She said we are just going to talk, as my daughter pulled herself into the corner with tears in her eyes.  The main issue with deer ticks is how long they have been in the skin.  At this point we were at 24-26 hours.  If a deer tick has been in the skin for over 48 hours thats when you have a problem.  Deer ticks hurt where they enter the skin.  Whereas a wood tick could go unnoticed if you didn’t check for them.  She didn’t test the tick or put her on antibiotics.  She told me that she would do the same for her own kids.  She instructed me to put Neosporin on it for the next 24 hours and keep an eye on it.  If I saw redness or she got a fever, we should come in right away.  She said the head being stuck in her skin was not a big deal as it would die and eventually fall out.  I thought that was the biggest problem.  The doctor said she had to inform the nurses on a lot of this information.  That even the nursing staff thought if you had a deer tick it was almost a sure thing that you would get Lyme’s disease.  Check out this link on the issue, I am in no way an expert.

So what can you do to keep your family safe?  The main thing to protect yourself is to do a tick check every night before bedtime. Check your children’s heads and bodies even in their underwear area, she said her own son had one in his scrotum.  I never thought I would use the word scrotum in a Twin Cities Moms Blog post, but there you have it!

Happy tick checking. I hope I helped you understand a little bit more about deer ticks and some ways to keep your family safe.