remindmeofthe | (no subject)

So here's a nifty piece of information: there are more people in North America with Lyme disease than AIDS, with an estimated 200,000 new cases each year. I bet you didn't know that. Here's why I know that.

I've been friends with Mandy for almost a decade now, and we've met face-to-face once. She came up to Portland to meet up with me and some of her other online friends in the area, and to see about going to school here. We walked all over the city that day. It was hot. I was wearing jeans, because I haven't owned a pair of shorts in years, and Mandy was wearing a skirt. In spite of the heat, and the fact that Mandy was clearly handling it more comfortably than I was, I remember thinking that I'd offer her a pair of long pants if I could, because skirts are generally not comfortable for tramping around all day in. I couldn't, though, because we were nowhere near my place and I don't think they would have fit her properly anyway.

Even though it was a city, there were a couple of grassy places, and we walked past those. Paused by one, maybe, while I tried to catch my breath; I don't remember exactly where anymore. Mandy picked up a deer tick somewhere. If it had landed on my jeans, we'd both be fine, but it didn't, and now Mandy has been sick for almost two years.

I didn't know anything about Lyme disease before Mandy was bitten. The only people who know about Lyme disease - that it can become chronic if it goes untreated long enough, that chronic Lyme disease is debilitating, that the best you can hope for right now is remission and that it probably won't kill you but you might just kill yourself to escape from it - are people who have it or whose loved ones have it. There's no real education and getting a correct diagnosis is like pulling teeth because the general attitude in the medical profession is that chronic Lyme disease doesn't exist.

Here is a trailer for a movie about people suffering from this disease that doesn't exist.

Mandy's doing all right, by the way. She's in remission and is going to school. Her health still isn't so hot, but she's learning to deal with it. She's on my flist and undoubtedly reading this so I'll just add that I'm really fucking proud of her.

Me? I've never really talked about it to anyone, but I have issues from all this. I don't mind wearing jeans in eighty-five degree weather anymore. I wear my winter knee socks, too, and not just because I don't have any lighter ones. I don't plan on wearing shorts ever again and don't even bother inviting me to go hiking. I think pretty often about how amazing it is that the vast majority of the population is healthy when there are so many things that can go wrong. I'm not egotistical enough to think Mandy's illness has anything to do with me, but god, I wish I could have offered her those jeans to wear.

And I'm posting this because you need to educate yourselves. Lyme disease isn't just some pain-in-the-ass illness you get over. Oh, and the rash doesn't pop up every time, either. It shows in, what, fifty percent of cases? So don't count on that either. Just be careful. Treat Lyme disease like the real threat that it is.

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I found out about this almost entirely at random - someone commented on one of my fics and she had information about Lyme disease in her userinfo because she suffered from it. I'm sort of amazed that deer ticks can end up in the city at all.

Insidious little fuckers. Portland isn't very big and is surrounded by woodsy places. It HAS several woodsy places. Plenty of chances for them to get in.

D: I'm sort of hoping the fact that I live in urban hell will save me from this. On the other, there are several mangy diseased foxes around this area.

It's not the woods, it's the animals. Deer ticks have a life cycle that's dependent on several different critters at several different times-- usually mice and deer. If you have wooded areas without white-tailed deer populations, or with very low mouse populations, you won't have deer ticks, and you probably won't have lyme. Actually I'm not sure about this for the west coast ticks, I know that's a different species and I don't know if they follow the same lifecycle as the ones we have on the east coast.

They get into cities mostly on the mice and they get into suburbs mostly on mice or occasionally dogs (although most of the ticks you see on dogs are dog ticks, which don't USUALLY carry lyme).

I spend all summer in a dead fear of ticks, because more than half the people I work with have had lyme at some point or other. This summer was a bad one for ticks, and every time I found one on me (on my CLOTHES, thank cats), I freaked out. Even if it was obviously a dog tick. I hate handling birds that have ticks, even though the tick is usually attached to the bird and not goin' after you... we're still bare-handed. I really don't know how I haven't been bitten yet. Or, hell, maybe I have been and just don't know it.

In short: EEK.

Interesting! I didn't know any of that. Freakin' mice.

Yup! It's the deer populations that are usually a marker for the presence of lyme. I think part of the reason we had/are having a bad tick year this summer is because we're also in the middle of a deer population surge (in MA, at least).

If you have an area with deer but without mice, you probably won't have lyme (although most everywhere has mice, so).

I'm still surprised your friend contracted it in a city, even a small city like Portland. I mean, it makes sense out where I work, 'cause it's a bloody wildlife refuge. But Portland? That is SCARY ASS SHIT, man.

Million to one chances ALWAYS pan out. It's the law. There are plenty of deer in this area; not necessarily in the city itself, of course, though I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up on the outskirts. I grew up about twenty minutes away and was always seeing deer tracks.

Thank you, Joan of Arcadia. Yeah, I knew about Lyme disease, even though I'm sure the show cleaned it up some. It's certainly one of the reasons I wear jeans and socks almost all the time, even if it's over 90 :P

I hope your friend's okay, and stays that way :(

oh my goodness, I'm so sorry about your friend! =/

I live in Northern NJ, which strangely enough even though we're "city" is a really bad area for ticks/Lyme disease. And people don't understand how much it freaks me out to go outside and stuff not wearing jeans (though I do have issues with overheating easily, so, usually if it's 95+ like it's been, I just wear long soccer socks) or stuff to protect myself because it can happen. I went to South Jersey a few weeks ago and we were outdoorsy and I had a tick on my arm and FREAKED OUT and I got home and all my online friends (and my friends from Jersey) were like, 'yeah, so?' Bah.

Dude, next time, freak out to me. I'll freak out with you.

Well, this is fairly random, but Maggie Gyllenhall is talking about deer ticks on Letterman.