What to do when you get a rick bite (Ontario edution)

I guess it was only a matter of time before I or my wife got bitten by a tick. It happened to my wife this last weekend on an otherwise beautiful walk in the Rouge Valley. Except, we didn't realize it until two days later (it was on her stomach for one thing!)

I knew I had to take it off as soon as possible with tweezers (pull straight out, no twisting or smearing!) But I had no idea what to do next. Well, now I do!

First, I took a photo of it and identified the tick through eTick.ca - some kind of AI application, I guess. We received a positive identification within just a couple of hours and, sure enough, it was a black-legged tick, or deer tick, the kind that potentially carries Lyme Disease. Not all of them carry the disease, so all was not lost at this point. But that was a  pretty impressive service, I thought.

My next stop was the Public Health Ontario webpage on  Lyme Disease. This resource has a flowchart you can follow to decide whether or not you need to get a prophylactic antibiotic shot. The first question is: do you have the tell-tale bulls-eye rash and/or flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, headache, stiff neck, fatigue, decreased appetite, muscle and joint pains, joint swelling, swollen lymph nodes, etc). If so, go straight to see a doctor or nurse practitioner. In our case, though, the answer was no, so go to Question 2.

Question 2 assesses the level of risk of Lyme Disease, and asks if all four of these risk factors apply: the tick has been removed in the last 72 hours; the bite occurred in a high-risk area (Google it); the tick was likely attached for at least 24 hours; and you have no allergy to the antibiotic doxycycline. In our case, we "ticked" all of these, so a dose of doxycycline was recommended (that seems to be the ONLY antibiotic that is recommended). If we had not been able to tick off all four, then the advice is just to monitor the bite and see if any symptoms occur.

So, we went to our local pharmacy - pharmacists innOntario are now authorized to treat this kind of thing, no need for a doctor's appointment - bought 2 tablets of doxycycline (after the pharmacist briefly went over all of the above), and Bob's your proverbial uncle. Actually, he even waived the $2.99 cost, so the whole thing cost us ... nothing!

What a good system!