Lyme Disease

[Grunt]

All, met a women with advanced neurological Lyme Disease last week. She has been going downhill progressively for the past five years. Now she is confined to a wheelchair and I first thought she was a stroke victim but her husband told me about her diagnosis. She is in her early fifty's and is not expected to see sixty.
Just wanted to post this to let you guys in on what can happen if you ignore tick bites. 

[CherokeeKC]

I have Lymes also.  Had it about 9 years or so.  If you catch it in the first couple weeks and get the medicine for it right away, a lot of people dont have any problem again.  But I know of one guy who has Lymes and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.  It hits him hard sometimes where he cant get out of bed.  He is nothing but muscle too like 220lbs, and owns a tree trimming business. 

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS:  If I had known this info I probably wouldnt have gotten Lymes.
1)  Dont squeeze the ticks body when pulling it out of the skin.  This sounds hard to do but not really.  Use the special tweezers or regular tweezers and try to grab the head. 
2)  The Lymes Disease is in the stomach of the tick.  There is only two ways you can get it from them. 
      1.  They have to be on you for 24 hours or more.  Around this time the tick will get "full" and start regurgitating back into your body.
      2.  If you squeeze them when pulling them off and you squirt the Lyme disease from their stomach into your body.
3)  Always check yourself for ticks at the end of a day where there was a chance you picked one up.
4)  Watch a bite location for a couple weeks to make sure it doesnt develop the red ring around it.  It will not be a solid red circle around the bite.  The bite mark will be red then there will be regular skin color around the bite then there will be a red ring/circle around that.

[aaron]

i also have lyme, and i heard a radio show on npr the other day which said the tick can give you lyme in only a few hours- not 24.
lyme really threw me for a loop when i first got it- debilitating joint pain and fatigue. I did not catch it soon enough, so the docs say i will always have a chance of "relapse" but none for 20 years. Lyme is in all 50 states .