It is so important to check for ticks daily!
A Facebook post shared by Amanda Lewis from Oregon brings awareness about a rare danger from ticks.
Amanda Lewis posted her concern over her daughter's inability to walk via a video on Facebook on May 13 . Her daughter Evelyn, was struggling to stand up and walk. “She could barely walk, or crawl, and could hardly use her arms,” Lewis wrote.
Luckily, the ER doctor had an idea of what to look for: a tick.
“The doctor talked to us for a minute and said over the past 15 years he had seen about 7 or 8 children her age with identical symptoms and more than likely she had a tick,” Lewis wrote. “They looked her over, combed through her hair really well and sure enough found a tick hiding in her hair.”
“This condition is called tick paralysis,” she continued in the post. “It can affect dogs also and can be fatal. I'm glad we took her in when we did and that it wasn't something worse and that we found it before it got worse.”
Lewis, whose video has 68K views & 625,761 shares on Facebook as of today. She wrote that the tick was removed, and it took until the next morning for Evelyn to start feeling like herself again.
The family was very thankful to the doctor they had in the ER that day, as it seems their girl is back to walking 24 hours later.
Tick paralysis is a rare disease that causes temporary, acute weakness and paralysis when a tick becomes attached to the body, Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Yale School of Medicine, told TODAY the disease is believed to be caused by a toxin in the tick’s saliva that impairs a person's nerve function, he said. Although this mainly affects children
“There’s a toxin that is secreted by ticks from their salivary glands that is toxic to nerves in humans,” Shapiro said.
Tick paralysis often begins in the lower extremities and moves upward in the body, he said. Once the tick is removed, people start to get better as the symptoms begin to disappear. Tick paralysis can occur from a tick bite anywhere in the country and symptoms typically occur after a tick has been attached for a few days, Shapiro said. It can come from various kinds of ticks, yet it’s an extremely rare occurrence.
“They usually start to go away within hours of the removal of the tick,” Shapiro said, adding that most people are back to normal after about 24 hours.
TICK REMOVAL
With a pair of fine point tweezers or a tick removal tool, grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible and pull outward with a slow, even force, pulling in the opposite direction to how the tick entered the skin.
DO NOT JERK OR TWIST THE TICK. This might tear the head and mouth parts from the tick's body and can push tick fluids directly into your skin or blood stream.
DO NOT USE YOUR FINGERS TO REMOVE THE TICK. Squeezing the tick could cause it to release the contents of its body into the wound. Remember, you can contract Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever simply by handling ticks and allowing their excretions to be absorbed through your skin.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REMOVE THE TICK WITH CHEMICALS (such as nail polish remover, liquid soap, kerosene, oils, etc) OR BY HEATING IT WITH A MATCH. This can kill the tick before it disengages its mouthparts. It can also cause the tick to regurgitate its contents into the wound, increasing the likelihood of transmitting a number of diseases.
WASH THE TICK ATTACHMENT SITE. Use warm soapy water and/or rubbing alcohol. You can apply an antibiotic ointment to help protect the bite site from additional contamination and secondary infections.
SAVE THE TICK. If you want to send it for testing (not generally recommended) place it in a small sealed ziplock bag with a very slightly damp cotton ball (not wet). Keep it in the refrigerator until you are ready to ship it. Remember- testing a tick does not guarantee the organisms in it will be detected, or that the infectious organisms were passed to you. NEVER wait for the tick test results to come back before being treated. Remember, the earlier the treatment the better!
You can also take your tick to the local Public Health office, but be prepared to not have it tested for Lyme, as all they may do is identify the species of tick.
DO NOT WAIT FOR A RASH OR SYMPTOMS TO APPEAR TO TAKE ACTION. Less than 50% of people with Lyme report a rash, and less than 10% of children nationwide have one. Do NOT wait for the disease to spread throughout your body and for symptoms to appear before being treated. In highly endemic areas treating the tick bite as soon as possible may help reduce the incidence of contracting Lyme and other tick borne diseases.
Above tick removal information originated from:
https://sites.google.com/site/getitrighttreatthebite/remove-a-tick