Finally Bought Some Land

[caleb]

There's a permethrin based repellent made by Sawyer you can find at WalMart- you spray it on your clothing, not on your body, and it lasts forty days or so. I recommend you have dedicated clothing for working outdoors- tall rubber boots your pants tuck into and the like. It's a pain, but lyme is only one of many life-changing diseases ticks carry. You can't be too careful, and this will help.

Just to underline the point about ticks, I was out in the woods with the pup on Friday night, then showered and did a thorough tick check. Saturday morning I woke up at 5am thinking I had an ingrown hair on my taint (you know what I mean), and chalked it up to increased mileage without enough chamois cream. Only when I got up did I realize it was a tick that had been there all night. So now, even if I don't end up with anything, I get to try to contort my body enough to check that area for a bullseye daily, and by the time you're doing that there's no good outcome. It's just a continuum between unpleasant and the urgent care clinic.

I have reservations about applying nerve agent, or any functional approximation of it, to my clothing, but trying to look at my taint daily isn't a good alternative.

[j44ke]

Get a hand mirror for butt checks. One of those lighted vanity hand mirrors (yes they make them) for seeing where the sun don't shine.

Unfortunately dogs in the family increase the risk factor for ticks in the house, and if your dog sleeps with you in the bed at night, that's an even higher risk. Too bad they are so warm and fuzzy.

My doc who now has lots of tick experience, says less 24-36 hours means your likelihood of being OK is high. The tick actually takes a while to get embedded. As I understand it, the feeling of an ingrown hair is the tick's anesthetic wearing off and your skin reacting to the tick. But they have to actually back-flush their feeding system for you to get the spirochete in your blood system, and that evidently happens after the tick has been embedded for about 36-48 hours (and the blood test won't reveal an infection for at least a week after the back-flush occurs.) However, you are supposed to remove the tick without squeezing too hard, because your grip can actually induce the tick to regurgitate into the wound and thereby transferring the spirochete. So you grip at the head with fine tweezers and pull straight away from the skin to detach in one pull. Or you use that tool above I guess.

Get that mirror!

[Mabouya]

It's a shame this is no longer available. (So much for the free-market being perfect.)

https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...-effectiveness

[hugh]

Freeze don't squeeze. Don't know if your ticks are the same as we have here in Australia, but we use a use a wart freezing spray to freeze them and then they just drop off.

More info in this video:

[j44ke]

Freeze don't squeeze. Don't know if your ticks are the same as we have here in Australia, but we use a use a wart freezing spray to freeze them and then they just drop off.

More info in this video:

Thanks Hugh.

[caleb]

It's a shame this is no longer available. (So much for the free-market being perfect.)

https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...-effectiveness

I've heard of both DVMs and MDs in high risk areas injecting themselves with the canine version of the vaccine. Apparently it's pretty similar to the stuff marketed to humans that was run off the market.