Tick Talk

Wood Ticks

How introduce ticks to visitors without creating mortal fear? Everything our visitors knew, or thought they knew, about ticks was really terrible – rocky mountain spotted disease, lyme disease, they crawl under your skin and get to your liver, unusual and special techniques are required to remove them or you can’t even remove them and the bites get infected.

Neither rocky mountain spotted disease or lyme disease is carried by Saskatchewan ticks – yet. Climate change may alter the spectrum of types of ticks and disease that they carry.

Eliminate such bizarre stories as migrating under the skin, heads breaking off under the skin and serious infections. The head of a tick is actually quite difficult to remove. In the thousands of ticks that we’ve removed in our house, the head has never been left behind. Sometimes a small scab could be mistaken for a head.

The tick latches onto skin and injects a slightly anaesthetic blood thinner. It then proceeds to suck blood through two small puncture wounds in the skin, its abdomen swelling with the blood. If it is not noticed, it can swell to the size of a bloated raisin. It looks utterly gross.

Most ticks are found on people before they become attached. In tick season it is recommended to have a nightly “tick check” in front of a mirror or with a friend. Ticks seem to survey the territory before settling on a site so usually picking it tick off is all that is needed. If it is attached to skin, the most effective method is to simply use thumb and forefinger like a pincer and pull it off – usually with a small quick jerk. It is extremely rare for the head to break off but when you run water and/or antiseptic over the bite, you can look closely at it*. This method works even with bloated ticks.

Bites rarely get infected. The itchiness of the bite might cause scratching and introduce germs so cover it or use calamine or benadryl on it so that you avoid scratching. Depending upon the sensitivity a person has to the tick blood thinner (the stuff injected by the tick), the swelling can be quite extensive. If there are red streaks extending from the bite, you have a fever or the swelling continues to spread beyond a few centimetres, see a trusted health care worker.

If the idea of picking a tick up between thumb and forefinger turns your stomach, you might like to try something more complicated. Eyebrow tweezers are awkward but can be used. Applications of vaseline, oil, vinegar, salt, or rubbing alcohol might be put onto the tick and after a period of waiting (five or ten minutes), with a tissue between your fingers and the tick, it is dislodged more readily. Don’t use cigarettes or matches or anything that might injure the victim.

Prevention involves pulling socks high over the bottoms of pant legs, cuffs on shirts and head gear that protects the hair and neck (a good place for hejab) would be useful. Insecticidal spray is not 100% effective. Of course, staying indoors prevents tick accumulation almost entirely – but it makes for a boring life. Prevention is helpful in tick season but still don’t forego the “tick check”. Ticks are annoying but rarely life-threatening.

*Since I have never been required to remove anything left behind, my advice would be to either use a sterile needle to pick it out as you would a sliver or leave it in place, disinfect and cover – the body will usually make a pustule around organic material and then you squeeze it out.

Ticked Off

There is nothing quite like the creepy feeling as a tick crawls on your body looking for a place to set up its drilling rig. For the first time in two and a half decades of dealing with ticks, this year many of their bites resulted in welts.  We used to conduct 'tick checks" before the kids went to bed - they never seemed to get welts.

 It was time for me to do some research. The internet, of course. A review of literature revealed that there was very little good data about “our” local wood ticks, the Dermacentor variabilis or “Dog Tick”. So I tapped another resource, a listserv run by the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada. Thanks to my colleagues from across Canada and especially those from the prairie provinces, the answers here are a summary of what rural doctors had to say:

Q. WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO REMOVE TICKS?

A. The quickest and surest is to hold the body of the tick between thumb and forefinger and perform a quick twist-pull with the wrist. Tweezers and needle-nose plyers are good second choices applying the same wrist movement. There is a little gadget on the market that can be slid under the tick to “pop” it off (I haven't seen it but I am told that it is sold in camping supplies).

Methods such as soaking an attached tick with vaseline, rubbing alcohol, or witch hazel work but take more time. Applying a lighted match or cigarette to the tick is probably more likely to cause damage to the victim although it will kill the tick (the theory that the “tick backs into the heat” is absurd).

Q. WHAT ABOUT THE MOUTH PARTS AND THE HEAD? WHAT if THEY ARE LEFT BEHIND?

A. Not one doctor reported heads being left behind after removal of the tick by any method. (In our house, we always check to see that there is a piece of skin in the jaws of the removed insect. A useless exercise because we don't do anything if we don't see skin.) The idea that the “heads migrate” is likely false; in spite of the widespread prevalence of the belief, no physician reported this finding.

To our knowledge, we have not had any mouth parts left behind. But if we did, a dermatologist stated that “Retained mouth parts would be very small and cause a minor irritation. The body would deal with them by literally dissolving them.”

Q. WHAT CAUSES THE ITCH AND WELT?

A. Ticks inject a local anaesthetic when they attach which is why we usually don't feel the attachment. They also inject a blood thinner so that the blood can be more easily sucked up. Either could cause a tissue reaction (like hives or mosquito bites) but the local anesthetic is probably the culprit. It is a neurotoxin and is injected in different amounts which explains the variability of the skin reactions.

It is not known whether the length of time that the tick was attached or the method of releasing the tick has any effect upon the development of a welt.

Q. WHAT DISEASES ARE TRANSMITTED BY TICKS?

A. Our local ticks are not disease vectors. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and a Progressive Paralysis occur, as the name implied, largely in the Mountains. Lyme Disease is coming from Eastern Canada and the USA and is carried by the deer or black-legged tick which is about half the size of the dog tick. Know your ticks; know the signs of the disease.

Although no physician reported seeing an infected bite, the itch could cause such scratching that the broken skin could get infected.

Q. WHAT ABOUT PETS?

Ticks are very annoying to large animals like horses or cattle, especially when the tick is engorged. Cats usually clean them off by themselves. Dogs need a little help; the neurotoxic effect can result in centimetre wide denuded areas with fairly significant scabs. The scabs, even when they are piled up, are not mouth parts or heads and do not need to be removed.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE:

This spring for the month of June in the Touchwood Hills Southwest of Wynyard, we removed up to seven ticks a day using the “finger-pinch” method. Not all bites resulted in welts but, when they did, the itch was unbearable. One “bite” left a huge area on my lower leg looking and feeling much like an infection - reddened and hot (cellulitis). It was gone the next morning.

When we remove ticks, we put them in a small “tick jar” containing rubbing alcohol - notoriously hard shelled, they are otherwise difficult to kill. A hammer on a hard surface works, as does the judicious application of a pair of plyers.

Prevention is key. The following precautions work: wear long pants tucked into socks plus long- sleeved shirts, tight collars and cuffs. Wrap a scarf around your neck. For exposed skin, use DEET. Don't walk in tall grass.

There were a lot of myths and misinformation uncovered in looking for scientific research about the “dog tick” and I suspect they will continue to abound. With respect to the “migrated head” story, if anyone has or suspects that they might have a bonifide “migrated” head under his or her skin, please call me. To show my appreciation, I'll make a house call!