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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Tick Bite


Last night I was giving Liam his bath and he fell trying to stand up in the tub. So I quickly scooped him up and tried to calm him down and get him dressed. I notice he had what I thought was part of a leftover blueberry from dinner but it was stuck. When I took a closer look it was a deer tick. Crap. As some of you know, Clay and I have a set of friends that have Lyme disease. So I called Clay and told him what was going on and then we hung up and he called the on call dr. and I called my mom. Mom said to use a match to stun the tick so he releases, which is what I remember doing being a kid. However, that isn't what you're supposed to do. By startling it with the heat the tick may vomit its stomach content which may contain Lyme. You should take a piece of string instead and wrap it around the site not the tick and slowly pinch it off, making sure not to squish the body. We also place the tick in a baggie in case it needs to get tested. It wasn't embedded yet so it must have crawled on him that morning when we went outside to hang the diapers on the line.

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