In case you missed it on the radio …
Oh no! That dark blue spot on the map is bad news. Each microscopic dot represents an incident of Lyme disease in 2014. Look at western Pennsylvania!
This year Lyme disease came closer to home than ever before. Several friends of mine caught it this summer in Allegheny County, in suburban Pittsburgh.
Do these anecdotes represent a real increase in local Lyme disease? If yes, what is causing it? And does it have anything to do with our weather or climate change?
I posted my question on the iSeeChange website (here) and The Allegheny Front‘s Kara Holsopple investigated. She found out that Lyme disease is increasing in western Pennsylvania and there’s more than one reason for it. Warmer winters (climate change) do play a part.
Read and hear the story here at: Tick Check: Why Lyme Disease is on the Rise in Pennsylvania.
(Lyme disease incidence map from CDC.gov. Click on the map to see the large PDF version)
My husband has had it twice… He was lucky he had the bullseye rash both times. If you have unexplained tiredness and your not sick was the most major symptom he had. I knew almost immediately that he was bitten the second time because of the extreme fatigue.
One thing that has surprised me about the whole issue of deer culling in Mt. Lebanon is that there has been no public discussion about the fact that some of these deer are probably carrying ticks with the Lyme disease bacteria – that reducing the herd is a serious public health issue.
My friend Jim (age 81 now) who lives near St Mary’s Cemetery off Mt Troy Rd in the North Hills had Lyme a couple years ago.
I guess I’ll be a blue dot on 2015’s map. I only had a rash, but not the bull’s-eye style. I didn’t feel ill otherwise (although I have a chronic condition so I should say I didn’t feel any worse than usual) and it was caught pretty quickly even though I never saw the tick. My doc was quick-thinking and while he suspected cellulitis (skin infection), he treated for both that and Lyme disease just in case. When I was able to be tested a few weeks later (tests aren’t reliable for the first 6 weeks), we learned that it was Lyme, so I’m grateful my doctor took that approach. We’ve become overrun with ticks the last few years. We didn’t have them prior to that. Nearly 40 years at this house, next to woods, but also suburban, and I never saw a tick prior to a few years ago and had never been bitten by one until a couple years ago. Now I don’t even have to go near the woods or mess with foliage to pick one up.