One morning last September, Pamela Perry's six-year-old son could not get out of bed. As he complained about exhaustion and excruciating head pain, Perry's friends and family members assured her he was just tired out from the school year starting up again. But Perry had a gut feeling that something else was wrong.
After a few days, she took him to the doctor, where her suspicions were confirmed: her son Benjamin had Lyme disease.
Debilitating symptoms, medical complications and constant worry
Lyme can be debilitating or even fatal if not caught early enough.
If it is caught in time, it is typically treated with antibiotics and will clear up after a full course of medication. For Perry's son, however, the treatment was more complicated than that.
Her son is allergic to amoxicillin, ruling out the most common medicine used to treat Lyme disease in children. The special medicine Benjamin had to be on was rare and needed to be specially made. "He would start a dose of antibiotics, and then the manufacturer would stop distributing that medicine," she says. Her son would then have to get a new prescription. The medication needed to be refrigerated and could only be preserved for short periods of time, meaning Perry had to pick up a new dose every other week.
Each time she picked up the medication, she worried about the toll the strong drug was taking on her child's young body. The stronger medication he had to take agitated his digestive system, and he started taking double his regular dose of probiotics to balance out the effects. He also had some trouble focusing in school and struggled with the constant feeling of exhaustion that is a hallmark of Lyme disease.
Fortunately, though, his most recent round of medication has worked, and the Lyme symptoms have dissipated. Still, Perry worries about her son's health much more than she did before the diagnosis.
"I am now hyper paranoid," she says. "As soon as he spikes a fever or gets sick, I'm worried the Lyme is back."
Pamela Perry says her son never had a bullseye rash and she
never saw the tick that bit him. While others assured her
that her son was fine, she trusted her motherly instinct and
took her son to the doctor.
Tiny ticks cause massive problems, be vigilant when checking
Her son will always test positive for Lyme now that he has been infected. To prevent either of her children from getting bitten again, Perry is very careful about making sure her sons use tick repellents and checks them multiple times a day for ticks when they've been out and about, rather than waiting until just before bed. "If they're out without me, I make sure whoever they are with knows to double check them and to just be really careful," she says.
Checking for ticks is crucial for preventing tick bites, according to Felicia Keesing, a professor of biology and chair of the biology program at Bard College. "Parents should be doing tick checks of their children - in their hair, behind their ears, on their clothes, anywhere a small tick could be - whenever their children have been playing outside in warm weather," Keesing says.
Keesing says ticks are most dangerous in the mid-spring to early-to-mid summer. That's also when they are the smallest and hardest to see. As eager as your kids may be to play outside and burn up the pent-up energy of the winter, it's crucial to check with eagle eyes for tiny ticks that could turn into massive problems if not spotted and removed.
READ MORE: Expert tips for dealing with ticks
Keesing also recommends that while parents are checking their
children, they teach their kids what they are doing and how to check themselves for ticks, because the threat tick bites pose does not fade as they get older. "By the time they're teenagers, tick checks are a responsibility they need to take on themselves," she says.
Thriving in the Hudson Valley tick hotbed
About a decade ago, Keesing's son Ben contracted anaplasmosis, another tick-borne illness with symptoms like Lyme disease that can become dangerous if not treated quickly.
Fortunately, Ben's case was caught early, and a full round of antibiotics brought him back to health. But many Hudson Valley residents are not so lucky. The region is a hotbed of tick activity, according to state data released last year that revealed that counties in the Hudson Valley have both the highest number of deer ticks as well as the highest percentage of Lyme disease-carrying ticks in the state.
That's not too surprising, given that ticks thrive in the wooded areas that are so common to the region. But it means parents should be especially vigilant when their kids have been out hiking or playing in the woods. "It's a good idea to have children wear long, light-colored pants tucked into light-colored socks," Keesing says. "That makes it easier to find ticks before they get onto the skin."
Trust your mom instinct
Perry advises moms to always trust their gut.
When her son was bit, the tick wasn't visible, and her son never developed a rash or any other visible symptoms. "But my gut told me that something was wrong, and I pressed it, and I'm so glad I did," she says.
Elora Tocci is a communications director and freelance writer from Newburgh.