thequicksilver
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RMSF has a mortality rate of 30% untreated, and is still 3-10% even when treated. I've also gotta answer questions for our county health department. Luckily, they gave my doxycycline for the rash to begin with, which is the treatment for RMSF, and I got it checked early, so I'll almost certainly be fine. Ticks are still stupid. Don't go playing disc golf and overthrow into the tall grass.
ionicseraph
Seemed like a rocky start and hopefully won't cause a mountain of medical bills. I'm glad they spotted your fever early.
jamandtoast
Lyme disease can kill. Source: my buddy's dead wife.
ElbowDeepInAJedi
Yikes. And I thought my Lyme disease was bad. Hope everything comes through all right, take care of yourself and keep us updated!
GFYandyourstupidrequirements
I literally just found a tick crawling on me for the first time ever. American Dog Tick. Apparently, not a carrier of Lyme, but potentially a carrier of RMSF.
tinydog
Craizie
If I found a magic lamp my first wish would be to get rid of all mosquitos, my second wish would be to get rid of all ticks. My third wish would be to erase my memory of my first two wishes so I didnt have to live with the fact that I was the one that screwed up our ecosystem.
omegaprimus01
Well on the bright side you are immune to the zombies in world war z movie now
TheShoggothOfMosquitoCreek
Yet another reason that northeast Ohio isn't so bad. (I grew up in Tennessee. My sympathies, fuck ticks.) (And chiggers, and copperheads, and water moccasins, and razor grass, and whatever those purple weeds are that stink so bad it burns your nose when you cut them, and leeches, - and you know what? I just realized that we lived in the woods and a lot of my childhood horrors are probably things no one else would understand.)
thinkybrainpains
southern ohio. samezies
HankFacepunch
Don’t go outside. Got it.
CaptainHarvey
Good Luck to you. My brother has had it for years. It took them a while to figure out what it was. He was being treated for lyme. He was and has been very sick, there is a lot of treatments out there and I don't know but he's tried them all. Right now he's doing ozone treatments in his blood. It's sort of a transfusion event where they put ozone in your blood, supposedly it kills it. I know he feels better. I wish you all the best.
bugzanddrugz
Yikes. I hope your brother feels better soon but all that is a lot of woo and he’s being taken advantage of and probably bleeding money for that nonsense.
BatmanDeadpoolSlenderMan
don't forget to protect your doggos from tics too!
PetricusGaming
At least it's not the Lone Star tick that gives you Alpha-gal syndrome. If you survive, you can still eat steak
notreallyaclevername
My sister in law got that one. She married my brother who is a meat smoking aficionado. She always has her EpiPen on her because she can't resist it haha
CrimsonShortOne
Ticks are stupid, I have a severe dislike for ticks
LateNightBunnyParty
I lost my favorite cat to bobcat fever last year. Carried by ticks. He was an indoor cat, but I'd let him come out in the back yard with me for an hour or so a couple of weeks before. Checked him all over when we came back in but didn't see anything. Even being treated for fleas and ticks didn't keep it from biting him.
EmailFail
I stopped doing outdoorsy stuff due to ticks. They're as gross as leeches and toxic as mosquitos.
randomguy365
Get a few pet possums.
JaromirAzarov
Approximately 0.5% of people who are infected die as a result according to CDC...
VaultGirl69
I grew up in the country and bugs loved to bite me. My mother used to say I have sweet blood. Damned ticks are terrible. Now I live in the city and don't go outside.
spooktree
How much for the Luna, mf'r
fukkatsu
I got Lyme last year in November, in NJ. Always check and treat yourself! They are out year round now with climate change.
Heelcat70
My mother got erlichiosis from a tick bite. Her temperature was so high they had to hospitaoize her and put her on a cooling bed that circulated cold water through the mattress.
childofsoong
I lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks when I had relapsing fever from a tick bite in high school. Fuck ticks.
koboldesq
Sounds like I've made the right choice by never playing disc golf.
frosss
I quit smoking weed right around the same time disc golf started so I never got to play
WenTheEternallySurprised
I spend a lot of time in the back country in Southern California, where ticks are effing everywhere. Long pants and gaitors are a minimum precaution for me. We have a lot less Lyme disease here (thanks to Western Fence Lizards, a very cool story), but even so, I hate having to collect ticks and monitor bites. Hiking in shorts is far more comfy, but not worth it. Ticks frequently do not bite right away; shower immediately after going anywhere with tall grass.
Jessy255
Fence lizards? What's the story behind that?
WenTheEternallySurprised
Sceloporis Occidentalis, the Western Fence Lizard. They have a natural immunity to Lyme disease, necessary because ticks are a staple of their diet. But it gets interesting when a tick bites a lizard...the immunity is transferred to the tick, so fewer ticks here are able to transmit the disease to other animals they bite. Including us humans. Cool, isn't it? (I think so, but I am kind of a dork.) In California, ticks are terribly common, but Lyme disease is rare, thanks to blue belly lizards.
Kasemoch
.
Jessy255
That is cool, thank you for sharing. I'm from Slovenia, we have lots ot ticks here, in some regions half of them are infected.
WenTheEternallySurprised
A funny side story...every Lyme testing facility wants you to send them the tick to be tested in a 35mm film canister. As if those things are common any longer.
olivertheoctopus
WaterUnderTheRocketAppliances
Sure, let me just grab my time machine and head to the nearest K-Mart in 1995.
WenTheEternallySurprised
Hell, there are entire GENERATIONS of people who may have never seen one.
Magpiebones
I wish we'd invest more in vaccines for tick-carried disease. They'd be minor nuisance if not for the few but very serious infections they can cause.
HelpfulCorn
What burns is there was a human Lyme vaccine, but it wasn't super effective or popular, so they discontinued it
Magpiebones
Iirc, it wasn't profitable enough, so yeah. So dumb.
olivertheoctopus
Bite check failed successfully! Glad you caught it early
JugOfVoodoo
Pro tip - Take a photo of your rash and bring it with you to the doctor. By the time I was able to see a doctor my bull's-eye rash had turned into a solid red oval. Luckily when I first found it I sent a picture to my mother. I showed that picture to my doctor, she agreed that it was Lyme, and immediately started me on the proper antibiotics.
laserfrog
Ticks are bad this year. Had 20 the other day.
TheShoggothOfMosquitoCreek
Are you a huntin' dog?
UnoriginalPieceOfRepeatingShit
Real bad this year. Even finding em in my house
PlumbingPredator
Just going to get worse... :/
Aeonika
They were wild last year too, we almost never saw them at one of our favorite camp sites but we were picking them up immediately on arrival, already got several this year and we've not even been camping yet.
heimeyer72
"Had 20 the other day." - My, why do you eat so many if they taste that bad!? Have one, if it's not good, throw the others away.
dreammer243
Ticks Georg is an outlier
PointlessBarking
thequicksilver
I had 17 when I got this. All under my socks.
laserfrog
oh no. I had a nest of the baby ones get under my socks once. I could smear them dead but my feet were just red polkadots for weeks after. So itchy.
tarnok
Roughbuddha
on your body???
laserfrog
Well, 21 but 2 were crawling on the cat. Maybe on my arms, pants, legs, underside of my shirt when I went to shower, boots, etc. It was throughout the day too.
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Californiajackson
That's it. I'm never going outside again. You can brick me up in the basement with a (very large, please) cask of Amontillado.
JoeGrunt
No, on his dinner plate.
Magpiebones
Nature's gushers.
KindaWeirdSometimes
ScatterJ0Y
What is the evolutionary purpose of insects like ticks and mosquitoes? Like, just why? Why are they here? Simply to fuck shit up?
sputnikrises
Evolution doesn't work through purpose, only what's successful. It doesn't necessarily make things better for other animals. Although you could say from the perspective of things that eat ticks, more ticks is better. They just found a niche and they're going for it
Kassul42
Keep in mind that per millions and millions of people, Noah brought a breeding pair of them onto the Ark. Seriously dude, you could have skipped them.
TheShoggothOfMosquitoCreek
"There are around 3,500 species of mosquitoes worldwide, which is more than the number of dog breeds."There are roughly 850 species of ticks worldwide" The Ark was a very itchy place.
nyvonisle
Now I like to think they hitchhiked on some deer.
skipweasel
If anyone's curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_spotted_fever
noWhiteHorseHereJustBatturuPrinsu
I was curious, but about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_golf
sDsnAlien
Holy shit
schizznatt
Wiki says a 0.5% mortality rate though.
RentedRedux
Side effects may include loss of math. Contact your doctor if you experience a standard deviation lasting over 4 hours.
Dimension09
I've been arithmetricked
thequicksilver
The numbers vary pretty wildly based on sources. Most of the sources I've seen come in much higher: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17838-rocky-mountain-spotted-fever
Sayagain
I'm coming up with 32.33, repeating of course, percentage of survival.
NopeHunter
LEEEEEEEROOOOY
Kehy
But do you have chicken?
somnif
I had a chicken, but it died. Of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
turbodog
When I came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome a few years ago, they did not at first know what was wrong with me. Paralyzed, can't move, can only blink, can't breathe on my own... they looked into my lifestyle, hmm... spends a lot of time outdoors... they checked *every* nook and cranny for tick bites. Do NOT overlook tick bites!
NotACanadian
That's what got my grandpa.
AvidApostate
Me too. Mine was made quadriplegic for several years before he succumbed, though.
NotACanadian
Mine had to get monthly infusions. He missed one and ended up collapsing. He got better, but he was always weak because of it. Died of a heart attack a few months after that
StabbyTheCat
They thought I had GBS in ‘96. It felt like a trapped nerve in my R. Bicep & 6-8hrs later I’d lost everything from my jaw down & was on life support. ICT for 2wks, hospital for 2mths. An MRI scan I had a month in, showed Acute Transverse Myelitis with lesions between C2-T7. It was triggered from my 1st ever contraceptive injection the week before. I was just unlucky. I didn’t find out my diagnosis change until I’d been out of hospital a month! (Incompetence really.) Did you recover fully @op?
turbodog
Pretty much, still some neuropathy in my extremities, right hand is still The Stranger after 6 years. Learned to walk and ride my bike again, just a lot slower.
frostybox
Happens in dogs too. Not sure if it is RMSF specifically but there is a tick paralysis. Have to shave the whole dog to find the tick, owners usually aren't real happy about that. But do you want A dog, or THIS dog?
QuartzPoker
One of my uncles had this out of nowhere one day, a while back. They got him to the hospital after he lost the ability to use his hands. To this day we still don't know what caused it.
frosss
Saw something like this on House
House: “He’s got all the symptoms of lymes but we can’t find any tick bites”
Everyone else: “You’re being crazy of course it’s Lupus” (never lupus) “he cuts hair for a living ”
House: “Hair…that’s it!”
Shaves guys head and big bullseye tick bite.
Heavenissize17socks
Scrubs, too
Turdfurgis0n
That was Scrubs with Dr Cox acting like House. House had the vagina tick.
IrrelevantHandle
There was also the kid with the tick bite nobody noticed because he was deformed so nobody wanted to spend too long looking at his face.
Arcanum3000
That...sounds like a remarkably dumb plot. Everyone just conveniently forgets to thoroughly check his scalp for tick bites?
flashboredom
Most of the House plots are dumb just to show off his sarcastic nature.
Arcanum3000
That's fair. It's one of those shows I've never gotten around to watching, so I know House is a substance abusing asshole but also supposedly a really smart doctor, but I have no idea about the details.
frosss
It’s actually pretty decent, it’s just a running joke for my wife and I that “it’s never lupus” because in almost every episode someone wants to diagnose lupus then House figures something else out.
Misora
Dare I ask where they eventually found it?
maincarrot
Up the bum bum because he got curious what a cat tail would feel like if it exploded up inside, and if that would finally let him finally see his farts.
Bad decision, Jimmy 💫 Now you have intestinal ticks. 😬 On the bright side, your farts sound like a muffle boat horn 😴 🌜 Nighty nighty, Jimmy. 🙂
LegendaryGrumpyCat
I am also curious, yet wary
IamDooters
Doot
turbodog
(Why can’t I copy/paste a previous comment?) anyways please see above
turbodog
It wasn’t a tick bite after all. It was my own immune system gone into hyperdrive and ate my own nerve cell insulation. But that can also be a result of a tick bite.
DarkAvenger42
You sound like an episode of House
OverthinkingThis
Nah, couldn't be a House episode. Because it sounds like he had Lupus, it's never lupus.
DarkAvenger42
Well.... It was once
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DaveTheScientist
GBS from which COVID vaccine? I haven't seen anything supporting that link. There is a very tenuous link between GBS and the influenza vaccine some years, but it's more likely the signal is actually coming from influenza infections.
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turbodog
My case of GBS was pre-covid. Not from immunizations at all, I in fact had had a very nasty set of cold symptoms, complete with an ear infection and very sore throat. Leading theory is, that's what kick my autoimmune response into their myelin-eating binge. Another possibility is that it was Zika, which was in the area at the time. Point being, don't be macho and refuse to go to the doctor because you're a big tough idiot. As an aside, "immunizations is teh bad" is stupid. I still get mine.