Dear Me Three Months From Now
So I was out at Golden Ears Provincial Park this past weekend and I noticed a weird purple dot on my arm. “It’s a tick bite!” declared my friend, Clayton. Then he said something derogatory about me being a “city girl” and I promptly forgot about it (I probably got distracted by something shiny). Anyway, over the last few days I’ve been watching it and it’s definitely some kind of a bug bite. It’s red, a bit swollen and definitely warm.
The reason I’m mentioning it here is because if it is, in fact, a tick bite and if the offending tick was, in fact, infected with something horrible, the symptoms won’t show up for months, by which time I will have forgotten all about this. So, if a few months from now I’m complaining of fever, headache, a circular skin rash and arthritis ((of course, now I’ve started reading about all the horrible things that can happen to you from a tick bite – like psychosis (!) in later stage infection with Lyme disease or paralysis and gangrene (!) from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, so I’m probably going to end up with Münchausen syndrome)), it’s your job to remind me that I probably got bit by a tick and probably have Lyme disease, k?
In slightly related news, I was told today the bugs (like ticks and their soulless 8-legged cousins who shall remain nameless here) have an affinity for estrogen and thus prefer to bite women ((In the interest of full disclosure, while I was told this by someone that I trust to know what they are talking about, I was unable to find a source to verify this information. And I looked for, like, 3 whole minutes. I think it’s a conspiracy. A spider-based conspiracy. The spiders don’t want you to know! Double bastards!)). Bastards.
Footnotes:
Ouch.
SPIDERS! (I just felt they had to be named)
Anyway, I’d never heard the estrogen story before. Sure it’s not a version of the fact that all mosquitoes who suck blood from mammals are female? (Only the female mosquitoes need the blood for protein for the laying of their eggs)
Spiders are evil. EVIL.
That is all.
When I was in San Francisco with Alex one trip, I got two bites on the back of my calf from something nasty and the bites got very big, very flat, very hard, and very hot for at least a week. It was très disturbing!
As for Lyme, you can have it for years before you notice any symptoms–I have a friend here who is being treated for it hardcore but she probably had it for like 5 or 10 years before they realized what was up. So I don’t think you need to worry about psychosis… and it could have been a bite from a non-tick entity the genus of which shall not be mentioned. Which in this case, while horrific, would be better than a tick bite.
I consulted with 2 doctors at dinner tonight and I’m pretty sure that it probably wasn’t a tick bite, so I probably don’t have Lyme disease. Apparently, ticks have to burrow under your skin and take a while to suck your blood, so I probably would have noticed the tick biting me. (of course, the 2 docs were PhDs, not MDs, but one has done a 1/2 year of med school)
Don’t worry, ticks do not just bite and leave, they burrow a bit. You usually have to burn them off or rip them out (carefully) with tweezers. My bro has had a few over the years. If it was a tick you would have found it, especially on your hand.
I agree with the spider comments. They can have some nasty toxins. One of my friends has a huge scar from what was a first just a tiny bite. It got really swollen and black before finally healing. If it is not very swollen it could have been from any number of other biting bugs or insects.
Bites on the hand are the worst as they always get aggravated and thus take ages to stop itching and go away!
Ticks still live in Golden Ears park so watch out!