May is Lyme Awareness Month, and with a wet spring we can expect a big crop of ticks.
Many people say, “I’ve never been bitten by a tick.” Well, one may not even be aware of a tick bite. When deer ticks are in the nymph state, they are the size of a pinhead. Sometimes they feed and fall off before you notice them.
Twenty years ago I was bitten by a deer tick infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, and today I have neurological Lyme disease where the infection went to my brain.
I have developed Parkinson’s symptoms (hand and head tremors, foot drop and involuntary movements) diagnosed as an essential tremor.
However, I feel there may be strong correlation between the two, and I worry that the high rate of Parkinson’s in our area may be connected to Lyme disease.
According to World Life Expectancy data in 2022, Rock County ranked No. 1 out of 87 Minnesota counties for deaths due to Parkinson’s disease, No. 2 for deaths due to Alzheimer’s and No. 4 for deaths due to strokes. Got your attention? It got mine.
Unfortunately, medicine is not an exact science. There is no lab test for Parkinson’s; it is mainly diagnosed by observing movement disorders. Accuracy on Lyme tests varies, and that’s a problem.
Not everyone gets the signature bull’s-eye rash. Other rashes may be triangular or oval-shaped, and some just look like a bruise, sometimes as small as a black and blue thumbprint. Lyme rashes have been misdiagnosed as shingles, ringworm and spider bites.
Early Lyme symptoms are sometimes dismissed as allergies, a cold, sinus infection or the flu. They can also include diarrhea, pneumonia, pink eye, appendicitis and strep throat.
We have to start looking for Lyme disease if we’re going to find it.
You may not even have to leave your house to get a tick bite. People and pets can bring them in. One morning I took a clean piece of clothing out of my dresser drawer and was surprised to find a tick on it.
One day I was walking down Estey Street when a bug fell onto my glasses from a tree above. I expected to see a spider, but when I took off my glasses, I saw it was a tick (confirmed by the person I was walking with).
Lastly, why aren’t we doing more to decrease the deer population, which is about one million in Minnesota alone? Vehicle-deer crashes, crop damage, multiple tick-borne diseases … are these not enough to warrant reducing our huge deer population? Aren’t humans more important than deer?
Note that I am not a doctor or a scientist so I encourage you to question what you are reading, but please keep an open mind and think outside the box.
Learn more about Lyme disease and Parkinson’s at: Minnesota Lyme Association (mn.lyme.org), Lyme Disease Foundation (lyme.org), Parkinson’s Foundation (parkinson.org) and Michael J. Fox Foundation (michaeljfox.org).