TICKed Off

As a long time resident of Western Ma, I am no stranger to finding ticks on me or my dogs. Finding a tick or two never really bothered me until a little over a year ago when I contracted Lymes disease on a camping trip with friends.

Lymes disease is actually a combination of a number of spirochete bacterium that enters the body upon being bitten by a tick, the most common bacterium being Borrelia burgdoferi. Also in the spirochete bacterium family, is the STD syphilis. Lymes disease is contracted after an infected tick is left attached to an unaffected host for at least 24 hours before being removed.

Lymes disease is responsible for 90% of vector-borne illness in the United States and had been reported in 49 of the 50 states, (Oregon being the lone state) and is present on almost all the continents. So basically put, regardless of your outdoor activities, this is definitely a disease that can, and will find you.

Symptoms of lymes disease vary with infection. Depending on the time infected and the bacterium contracted, symptoms can include, but aren’t limited to: headaches, stiffness, fever, severe muscle pains, weakness to paralysis of limbs, difficulty speaking and chewing, stroke, seizure, sleep disorder, severe cognitive and emotional changes, blindness, nausea, diarrhea, anorexia, difficulty breathing, miscarriage, and has even been attributed to cause of suicide.

For me, at first I felt like I was permanently hung-over. My neck was sore, I was overly tired, I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t eat. I spent the majority of my nights half asleep in the bathroom vomiting. During this time I began to notice a bruise on my inner leg that was slowly increasing in size. At first it was a small purple bruise but after a few days it was accompanied by large red rings around it. By this point I had stopped eating almost entirely and had given up on any strenuous activity. After about 3 weeks of this my inner leg had become almost entirely engulfed by the bull’s-eye shaped rash and it had gotten to the point where my parents started becoming concerned.

I self-diagnosed myself and went to my doctor where upon seeing my rash and hearing my symptoms promptly referred me to a local Lymes specialist. Because of my advanced symptoms and tell tale rash mark I was instantly put on antibiotics and given a number of blood tests.

Upon return of my blood tests I found that I had been infected by three different strains of the bacteria, including an especially viscous one which was the partial cause for the intense and acute symptoms that normally take years to appear in those infected. Another reason for my quick reaction to the disease was the fact that my body’s cells are actually host to markers that are extremely similar to those of Lymes, causing my body to literally kill itself.

It took about 4 weeks of anti-biotic treatment before I was close to 100% again; however I still am recovering from a staggering 30 pound loss from the 2 months of infection. Although I was greatly inconvenienced by it, I consider myself lucky. The bulls eye bruise that led me to assume I had Lymes only occurs in 9% of Lymes infections. In most cases people will stay infected for years with only minor symptoms leaving the bacteria time to spread across the body and become extremely difficult to treat.

Sources:

http://www.lyme.org/

Nick Cline week 2 (B)

UPDATE -

As far as symptoms go, the more damaging ones like mental deterioration and blindness tend to appear way later in infection. This is because the virus virtually spreads over your entire body and as it does it leaves a trail of symptoms.

I knew about my multiple infections because I got a blood test checking to see if I actually had the disease or not. Strangely it also showed that at one point I had also contracted mono. I've actually been tested for mono previous to that and it had never showed up positive, though there was one occasion where i was 99% sure i had it.( the school did the original mono test that proved negative, so needless to say i don't trust UHS anymore).

Yes ticks are the only organism that can spread lymes. The way they go about it differs from specie to specie. Ticks go through multiple life stages which are prompted by blood meals. For some species a tick can contract lymes in an early stage and will keep it for subsequent stages, however, other species will lose their ability to pass the disease in between morphs. Not all ticks carry the disease either, the increasing prevalence of the disease is mostly caused by an increase in the ammount of large animals like deer and bears that are in proximity to humans. Also previously large ammounts of DEET used to kill off ticks and large animals who were poisened but now there is no anti-tick chemicals being used that are anywhere near effective as DEET.