One of my younger aunts had "tick fever" (that was what their doctor called it) back in the 1930s. She was a child and it messed her up pretty bad. Some of it never did clear up, like the arthritis (at 5 years of age, not normal for a child to suddenly develop arthritis in multiple joints).
All these years I had mistakenly assumed that "tick fever" and "Lyme disease" were the same thing, but according to
ehow.com they're two different things,
although both caused by things that ticks transmit via bites. If I've read this stuff correctly, the page claims that
Lyme disease is caused by a
bacteria so antibiotics are effective against it, whereas it says that "
tick fever" is caused by a
virus - if that's true then antibiotics wouldn't work, because
antibiotics don't kill viruses (also
here). Ok so anti-viral then, but oh wait this
page claims that antiviral drugs are targeted to specific viruses, I don't see tick viruses listed there (although that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, maybe I just didn't research it enough).
More reasons to use bug-repellent etc:
chronic Lyme disease. Chronic means you're stuck with it for life so you might as well get used to it.
Among the possible symptoms:
Even (or perhaps especially) nowadays, I can see the potential for something like that to not be treated in time and become chronic, given that (for a variety of reasons) people sometimes put off going to doctors for anything less than some obviously-emergency thing.
Prevention sounds like a very good idea. Other people above have posted good ideas as to prevention.
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