ah, the joys of living in pennsylvania
Get bit by a tick. Spend the evening researching what kind of tick it is, what diseases it might be carrying, the statistical likelihood of those diseases in your region, whether or not they can kill you, what the symptoms are, and at what point you run sceaming to the doctor for broad-spectrum antibiotics.
Answers: American Dog Tick, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Extremely Low, Yes, and if I have so much as a tension headache in the next two weeks because YES.
Many thanks to the Etymology Department of Penn State--even though it took me repeating it five times for my mother to understand and believe that I didn't have to worry about Lyme disease. (Which is a boogeyman around here--everyone knows someone who has some kind of chronic symptom thanks to a delayed diagnosis.) Also, much gratitude to whoever invented the tick key, which really does work as advertised, and was the only thing that could get that bugger off--and did so painlessly and easily. Definitely recommended if you live somewhere with ticks.
Answers: American Dog Tick, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Extremely Low, Yes, and if I have so much as a tension headache in the next two weeks because YES.
Many thanks to the Etymology Department of Penn State--even though it took me repeating it five times for my mother to understand and believe that I didn't have to worry about Lyme disease. (Which is a boogeyman around here--everyone knows someone who has some kind of chronic symptom thanks to a delayed diagnosis.) Also, much gratitude to whoever invented the tick key, which really does work as advertised, and was the only thing that could get that bugger off--and did so painlessly and easily. Definitely recommended if you live somewhere with ticks.