The Michigan Department of Community Health cautions that ticks can carry human and animal disease — including Lyme disease, an infection caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, which can be serious if not properly diagnosed and treated.
That’s a caution echoed by Jimmy Bornamann, owner of a Mattawan restaurant-consulting business, who picked up Lyme disease from a tick bite in August 2008. It was nearly a year later that disease symptoms exploded, perhaps exacerbated by other stress in his life, Bornamann said. “It went nuts — I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t walk.”
The disease may start as a skin rash and can progress to more serious stages involving joint, nerve or heart damage, health advisories warn. Although most tick bites won’t cause disease, officials said, it’s good to have any worrisome symptoms checked by a doctor if a tick bite has been involved.
Bornamann has set up a website — www.igotlyme.com — to help track cases of Lyme disease around the world, and is in the process of establishing a foundation to help provide financial support for people who have lost income as they battle the disease. That is online at www.bitebackfightlyme.com.
He said he hopes a related blog will allow patients to both commiserate and to share tips for dealing with symptoms of the disease, which in his case included fatigue, joint pain and mental confusion.
“Your symptoms kick your butt. The blog is designed around being positive and trying to keep people uplifted,” he said.
Dangers of contracting Lyme disease can be reduced by increasing awareness of tick activity, preventing their bites as much as possible, and removing the ticks promptly when they do bite.
“I was outside for about four hours, and I found three ticks (on me),” Torrey Wenger, conservation education assistant at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, said recently. Mother’s Day to July 4 is generally the peak time for tick activity, she said.
Wenger said Nature Center employees remind visitors to check themselves and children after outdoor activities. Wearing light clothing helps make ticks easier to spot, and tucking long pants into socks is a good preventive measure, too, she said.
She advises removing crawling ticks with a piece of Scotch tape and folding the critter inside. “I laminate them like a sandwich,” she said.
Ticks that have already become attached may be removed with fingers or tweezers by grasping close to the head and pulling straight out.
Vern Johnson, supervisor with the Kalamazoo County Environmental Health Division, said his office has received calls and questions from throughout the county. “Right now, this is when they are at their worst, “ Johnson said of ticks.
Johnson says pets should be checked, too, after walking through grasses outdoors. “(Ticks) are lazy little critters, and they like to get their blood meal wherever they can get it,” he said.
Both people and pets can get Lyme disease.
“We haven’t seen any Lyme disease this year (in people),” Rebecca Burns, environmental health director with the Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency in Three Rivers, said in late May. But she was beginning to hear comments from people about the abundance of ticks.
Allegan veterinarian James Connell is vaccinating many dogs this season, and has found a few cases of Lyme in dogs during heartworm checks, he said.
Contact Rosemary Parker at firstname.lastname@example.org or 269-388-2734.