Tick Talk
Posted by Danielle Bean in Health on Wednesday, April 07, 2010 10:00 AM
The ticks are back.
I’ve picked a few off of the kids so far this season, and already I feel myself itching all over.
I have always considered ticks a nuisance. A pretty gross one at that. Living so close to the woods like we do, we see quite a number of them each year. Really, though, I always thought of them as just a nuisance.
But this past January, my 6-year-old Gabrielle was diagnosed with Lyme disease.
Now that this nuisance was threatening my daughter’s health, even months after we had seen a tick on any of the children, I became quite concerned (Gabby is fine, by the way. Thank you, God, for strong antibiotics!).
Am I supposed to keep my children out of the woods? Am I supposed to make them wear long pants through the summer? Am I supposed to douse them with DEET?
Now that the season is upon us, I guess I am doing none of those things.
I am checking the kids bodies for ticks every night before bed. But I still might miss one.
I am not allowing them to play on the ground in areas I know are infested (baseball practice fields anyone?). But they can still crawl up our pant legs.
I am putting DEET insect repellent on their clothing, especially pant legs and hats. But that doesn’t seem to stop them much.
But mostly I am learning to let go of the panicky need to control my children’s environment perfectly. I just can’t.
I can only do my best to take reasonable measures to prevent tick bites and remove them as I find them. I can only trust that, even if another of my children becomes infected with Lyme disease, we will be okay in the end.
And that’s the hardest part, isn’t it?
Some helpful links:
Tick Bites Instruction Sheet
AboutKidsHealth
CDC instructions for tick removal
Tick Identification
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