Lyme month day 27–Bad Advice

I am frustrated, y’all. I am frustrated at the amount of false, and downright dangerous information that is being spread around social media this month as “Lyme facts” or “tick removal methods.” I’m frustrated, I’m sad, and I wish I could reach through the screen to every person that is commenting on the posts and shake them and tell them the truth. Show them the truth. And tell them that they can maybe help themselves even just the tiniest bit by not listening to that bad advice. 

The first thing that got to me this month was the essential oil tick removal method that is going around Facebook. It is a video of someone dripping peppermint essential oil on an attached tick. The oil causes the tick to back out, removing itself from their skin. They say that it’s an easy, painless, removal method. And when I looked in the comments, I saw so many people saying that it was brilliant and that it was so much safer because it got rid of the risk of leaving the head of the tick in your body. What they aren’t aware of, or maybe aren’t acknowledging if they are, is that dripping the essential oil (or dripping anything) on the tick causes it to empty everything from its body into your body. Think about that for a second. It’s as gross, awful, and scary as it sounds. And it’s for sure not something that you want happening.

But the thing that really fired me up and inspired this post today was a series of pictures entitled “Is this Lyme disease?” Each picture had a skin rash/bump/lesion in it and underneath it said whether or not it was Lyme, according to the person who wrote the article. Immediately my guard went up when the first picture was a tick bite, without a bullseye, and it said “No! This is not Lyme disease. This is just a normal reaction to a tick bite. This does not indicate any infection.” 

*Deep breaths Leigh, deep breaths* 

I have shared the statistics many times before here on my blog about how many people who have Lyme get the “classic” bullseye rash. And the numbers are always changing. But, according to the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society right now, it can be as low as 15%. Fifteen. Percent. Only 15% of people get that bullseye that is recognized as “the Lyme rash.” So, no one. No. One. can look at a tick bite and say it is not Lyme. Hell, no one can even look at a negative Lyme blood test and say it’s not Lyme. So by no means should that article with those pictures and that VERY false information be going around as truth.

If you have a tick bite and for any reason at all suspect that it could be Lyme—you don’t know when you got it, or even if you do know when you got it but you have ANY symptoms that have come on after the bite—get yourself to the doctor. No matter what the bite looks like. Better safe than sick for the rest of your life. 

And, if you see these things floating around social media, say something. Or, if you don’t feel like you can say something, at least don’t share them. Please. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a thousand times—it takes every single one of us.