Yesterday I was working away and got up to take a quick break and grab a bottle of water. My 9 year old, Lucas, walked into the kitchen and gave me a hug. I ruffled the back of his hair as he went to walk away and it felt like there was something stuck in his hair.

“Lucas, wait you’ve got something caught in your hair.” Expecting to pull out a piece of paper, or a leaf, or some other oddity that a little boy would get in his hair I ran my fingers over it to snag it out and he let out a painful squeal. It was attached whatever it was, maybe it was gum. I sifted through his thick wavy locks and found the culprit! I gasped and showed Brian, and said “hold his hair I’m getting the tweezers. Lucas, don’t move there’s a bug in your hair.”

His reaction ~ “Just flick it out and let me go play. Mom, what the heck do you need tweezers for?”

Well, I got the tweezers and a container to put the tick in with some rubbing alcohol, everything I read online said to save it for proper identification in case there were health problems afterwards.

I couldn’t get the bugger out and didn’t want to continue trying and hurting Lucas and end up breaking the head off the tick and having a worse problem then we started with. Brian tried once, and we both agreed that it would be best to let the doctor remove it and be sure that the whole thing comes out. Everyone put on their shoes and we headed over to the ER. Which was eerily quiet. We had no wait time at all, registered, spoke to triage, showed her the tick, she checked all the usual vitals and we were sent to the second floor fast track care unit where a nurse practitioner came to greet us right away.

She introduced herself to Lucas, “Hello, my name is Nancy. It’s your lucky day. I grew up in Connecticut and we had lots of problems with ticks so I’m well practiced at removing them. I’m just going to remove it with my hand and it won’t hurt. Are you ready?” Lucas said, “Sure,” and put his head down a bit. She asked if it was okay with me that she just use her hands and I agreed to whatever was easiest. It was all very cool. She grabbed it between her fingernails, proclaimed ready, and did this wrist twisting motion and it was all out. Leaving behind this odd little hold in my child’s scalp. Yikes that bugger was in there pretty darn far! She placed the tick in a paper towel, showed it to me and to Lucas, folded it in half and placed it on the floor and let Lucas step on it a few times for proper squishing.

It was all done, and we got some paperwork outlining symptoms to watch for and instructions for cleaning the area and applying some neosporin to it to prevent infection of the bite area. Ticks can carry all sorts of nasty diseases, so there’s lots of symptoms to watch for over the next week, headaches, nausea, dizzyness, rash, spots, joint swelling, and all sorts of things that might even be mistaken for the flu. Great.

Of course at one point I admit I felt like a bad mom because I didn’t already know how to remove the tick. I’d never done it before. One time when I was younger my cat got a tick and I held him while my stepfather removed the ugly little critter from the poor cat’s face. In my research of tick bites and removal of ticks I found that they actually make a device to remove the tick without squishing it. The Tick Twister. What a nifty little gizmo that is. It looks like a little green crowbar! But just looking at it I’d have to say it’s a better option than trying to grasp it with tweezers, especially when it’s on your child and you’re trying desperately to remove the tick quickly and painlessly! For $6.95 with free shipping, it’s definitely something worth adding to the first aid kit, and each pack has two Tick Twisters in it, one with a small opening and one with a large opening.
Technorati Tags:
ticks, tick bite, tick news, lyme, lymes, lyme disease, rocky mountain fever
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us |