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The last two years have been very intense for friends and neighbors getting Lyme disease. All are friends I hunt and fish with.

Here is a link to an excellent article that all of us outdoors-type people should read. It very well discusses the issues my friends and I have seen first hand. Be Very Afraid of Lyme Disease

My first encounter with Lyme disease was shortly after it was first discovered in Lyme, CT. My wife's family lives in that part of NY state and CT. Deer run rampant in that area. It is suburban, and with a lot of wilderness in between.

About 10 years ago, my father-in-law thought he had rather suddenly developed really bad rheumatoid arthritis. He felt awful. He was told that he may need hip and knee replacements. He was a retired state trooper who still swam and worked out seven days a week. He also spent a fair amount of time in his garden. He had to give all of that up, that summer.

This went on for a number of months before he was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease. At that time he lived in Mt. Kisco, NY, very near to where the author of the above cited article lives. Because it had gone undetected for so long, it took quite some time to get it under control.

Since last fall, about when deer season started, we've had at least 10 friends contract Lyme disease. Only one was quickly diagnosed when his doctor saw the "bullseye" and my friend told him it was where he had removed a deer tick. It was very possible that it was from a deer that I butchered. I removed two deer ticks on the evening after skinning and quartering a deer from this friend.

Four friends have gone through hell in about the last two months because of misdiagnosis, and unwillingness by their doctors to test for, or believe in, Lyme disease. All were initially diagnosed with unidentifiable illnesses. One was diagnosed with a kidney problem and another with a prostate problem and arthritis. The other two were basically undiagnosed for anything identifiable, except for fever and aching bodies.

All have recovered after the Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment. In the meantime, three of them missed many days of work. The fourth is retired.

The deer ticks are very small.

I check myself fairly closely each evening before my shower. I've got chickens and I've got guinea fowl which may also help keep the population down on our property.

If you find you've got a fever, very achy joints, and feel just awful -- push hard for a Lyme disease test.

My wife contracted Lyme disease 20 years ago and went through the same BS. It nearly killed her due to heart problems. She still suffers from achy joints 20 years after a 30-day antibiotic treatment after she insisted on a test. How come we have made so little progress?

This might sound wierd but a guy I work with hasn't been able to eat red meat since a tick bite about 10 yrs ago.. He also runs a deer/meat processing store out of his shop and his family has a well known very old butcher processing shop in St. Louis that was recently closed (due to gubment fees and jumping through loops according to him) sad for him he loves all kinda of meat and will put his self through absolute hell and eat it a couple times a year then his whole body starts to lock up and he gets sicker than a dog..

Tick bites have been established to be associated with meat allergy. It is not clear why.

https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2009/190/...-allergy-humans

Tick fever has been a huge problem in Oklahoma this year.

Something to keep in mind is that the blood test that your doc may be reluctant to give you is about as reliable as the weatherman. Misdiagnosis all the time. People get a 'positive' result and think its the end of the world, and they don't even have it. Others get a negative result, and their health continues to go downhill, until they get a second opinion, guess what....positive. Just happened to my dad, and my wife takes care of this stuff in her job.

It still amazes me how stubborn and narrow minded some doctors are. I too know of someone whose doctor refused to test for Lyme's disease and finally did and lo and behold the man had it.

I also know a taxidermist/ furbuyer that contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and her doctor absolutely refused to test for it. When he finally did it came back positive.

Had a doctor once that bascially told me I'm the doctor and shut up. I fired him.

Sorry arrogance is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Perhaps a second test is in order to verify?

On a funny note my wife and I went fishing on our honeymoon to Quabbin reservoir Massachusetts. Ticks are thick out there and while we were fishing I noticed a red bullseye on her thigh. I freaked! Turns out it was the imprint of the butt of the fishing rod as she was standing it on her leg!

Anyone have a picture of the "bullseye" bite???

We used to have a lot of ticks and chiggers. I sprayed every time I left the house. Then drought set in and I haven't even seen a tick on a deer in quite some time. I guess drought has at least one benefit.

I don't have a clue why, but have never seen a tick on any of my family at my house. Plenty of deer though! None on the dog that we have seen, though she has longish fur so easy to miss.

About 15 years ago I was big into mountain biking, and had a rough summer of not feeling 100 percent and has very achy joints. For at least one week I could barely open and close my hands. I finally made a doctors appointment and the day before the symptoms went away and never came back. I had not heard of Lyme's disease at the time, but I sure wondered!

We have some friends a few miles from us who contracted it and it took a long time for them to get rid of it.

It would be nice if a vaccine were developed, but probably not enough money in it like the fight against obesity.

Just a few weeks ago when getting out of our hot tub I noticed a mark on my wifes' side, like from the jet hitting her a giving that welt on her skin. Well a few days later I saw it was still there. That ain't from the hot tub. A few weeks of antibiotics and it's all better. What's funny to me is she had some aches and pains while going through this, but they said the lymes wasn't to the aches and pains stage yet. IT was the antibiotics that was giving her the pains.

In addition to the other symptoms, heart problems can develop if it is not treated for a long time. This is what happened to my wife. She went from an incredibly fit and active person to an invalid. It took 30 days of antibiotics to start to see a significant improvement and years to reach a plateau in the recovery.

There's some weird stuff out there. I know a guy that was visiting relatives in Georgia and came down with a virus that effected only his heart. Make it race at 120 beats a minute while he was just sitting there.

Cecil, tell your friend that a virus that attacks only the heart is a very serious condition. Its very hard to treat a virus (if possible) and it could lead to cardiomyopathy(sp). A very dangerous ailment!

One of our dogs, Boone, got diagnosed with Lyme disease a few months back.

We got back from vacation, and upon seeing Boone, we could tell that his left front paw was swollen. Basically, he had no space between his toes on that paw, especially compared to his right front paw.

He was not favoring the paw at all and had no reaction when you probed it.

The Vet x-rayed it and saw nothing, so he did a blood test for Lyme and it came back positive.

A month long treatment of antibiotics, and the swelling is gone.

Boone's front left paw kind of looked like what you'd see on a stuffed animal.

I once read that ticks seem to cycle through mice and are sensitive to permethrin. Permethrin somehow binds to cotton.

Military personnel, in tick infested areas, soak their cotton field uniforms in a permethrin solution and tuck their trousers into their boots. Ticks crawling on the cloth get a lethal dose of permethrin. Outdoorsmen could follow that example, keeping in mind that permethrin doesn't seem to bind to synthetic fibers.

Cotton balls soaked in a permethrin solution, dried and packed into the cardboard centers of paper towel or toilet paper rolls then put around in places accessible to mice allows the mice to gather them up to line their nests. This, of course, exposes the ticks that are on the mice to a lethal dose of permethrin.

This information and the necessary materials are available online.

Hey, that is an awesome idea with the mouse nest building materials.

I agree, Squid, and I regret being unable to take credit for thinking up that one.

A friend of mine once summed up my category when he said, "If you can't use your head, you might as well have two patooties." Such is the misfortune of some of us.

does the permethrin kill the mice? If so, that would be a "win-win"

Doesn't affect the mice. I've read that permethrin and cats aren't a good mix but I don't know details.

The problem is we would have a lot of Permethrin insulation in our house before long. Been at the house for years trying to block mice. Only have reduced their numbers.

I use permethrin on one set of clothes, that I TRY and wear everytime I know I'll be in tick and chigger areas. It does seem to help, and it's supposed to last for a few washings.

Per Dudley, the bottle is quite adamant about the dangers of exposing cats to permethrin, however.

On the cat thing, like ponds, it depends on your objectives.