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Hi,

We went to the North east area from Dallas to find a good LLMD and stayed in Washington DC for the last day ( 25th) in an apartment my husband stays( he works there and travels). On 27th,he saw a lot of bugs in the apartment and asked the apartment to eradicate them. They just told him it was bed bugs. On 27th here in dallas my son complained that he a lot of bite marks on his body and they look like they are bed bugs bites . I'm very scared here ....I have already opened the suitcases and left it opened for the last 2 days. Yesterday I cleaned all the clothes and dusted the suitcases outside. But I'm worried that they would have already crawled out if they were on the suitcases. Yesterday the whole day I was worried. We went to get my son cured and came back with more problems.

today I got a scare when my son went to the bathroom to bath and found 2 bugs in his groin. He pulled them out before telling me ....they are pin sized and full of blood. I am freaking out here......I stored the bugs in a container....I do not know what to do now.

So now he is bitten by beg bugs and ticks....just by visiting virginia. I dont have an LLMD here in texas......but I do have DAN here who will prescribe me anything I want. Please tell me what is the first line antibiotic to use in case of tick bites.

I am freaking out here. Please help.

Thanks,

Sam.

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Hi,

We went to the North east area from Dallas to find a good LLMD and stayed in Washington DC for the last day ( 25th) in an apartment my husband stays( he works there and travels). On 27th,he saw a lot of bugs in the apartment and asked the apartment to eradicate them. They just told him it was bed bugs. On 27th here in dallas my son complained that he a lot of bite marks on his body and they look like they are bed bugs bites . I'm very scared here ....I have already opened the suitcases and left it opened for the last 2 days. Yesterday I cleaned all the clothes and dusted the suitcases outside. But I'm worried that they would have already crawled out if they were on the suitcases. Yesterday the whole day I was worried. We went to get my son cured and came back with more problems.

today I got a scare when my son went to the bathroom to bath and found 2 bugs in his groin. He pulled them out before telling me ....they are pin sized and full of blood. I am freaking out here......I stored the bugs in a container....I do not know what to do now.

So now he is bitten by beg bugs and ticks....just by visiting virginia. I dont have an LLMD here in texas......but I do have DAN here who will prescribe me anything I want. Please tell me what is the first line antibiotic to use in case of tick bites.

I am freaking out here. Please help.

Thanks,

Sam.

You do not do a darn thing unless someone becomes symptomatic and or develop a rash (granted a rash only occurs in Lyme+ people about 30% of the time). My goodness do you know how many tick bites us country folks get a year? In a good year we will get only 50.

This is the worst time of year for us as you can walk through a nest of "seed/nymph ticks and get 30 or 40 on you. They are like pin dots and very hard to make out. I took apart a pair of binoculars and use that for major magnification. Just think what it is like to get 5 of those little suckers attached to your scrotum (sorry but there is no other way to put it as it happens all the time.) Thank god for my wife and the tweezers and magnification. Make sure you remove the pinchers of the tick!!! They break off all the time even with experienced hands. And it is not just tick bites that carry problems. I counted 15 or so various bites I received yesterday just from mowing the lawn. August is the worst time of the year. I would be on antibiotics full time if I took them for every tick bite. Of course that is kind of funny as I am on antibiotics full time right know for bartonella. So LOL on me. Speaking of bart it does not just come from tick bites but all sorts of avenues of transmission including cats, dogs horses and other insects than ticks. One cannot allow themselves to freak out at every tick bite. People suffer hundreds of thousands of tick bites a year and only a relatively small percentage ever get sick. It is ironic that I got bartonella (as least I am pretty sure without writing a long history) when I was on antibiotics for a tick bite. I had removed a tick and about 2 or 3 days later an large expanding rash appeared. Now I had plenty of doxy in house so I hit it with 200 mg twice a day for 3 weeks. I still got bart! Was it from that fateful tick bite back in Sept 2007?? I'll never know for sure but when I trace my symptoms backwards from my + bart test from Galaxy Diagnostic last Sept./2011 then it seems that is when it all started.

But in the meantime I just try to find them before the get attached and remove them if they do get attached and live my life. Otherwise I would go crazy thinking about it.

Red

Edited by red
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Besides the double dose of tindamax and the doxycycline, I have been told to immediately soak the site of the tick bite with echinacea tincture. I also put rubbing alcohol and/or peroxide on the site, then neosporin. Maybe overkill, but I will try anything at this point.

 

Colleen

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You have the ticks - there are places to send them to be tested. I've not done that so don't have any advice but the Internet is your friend. Even the great state of Texas which I understand denies the existence of Lyme bacteria there, can't argue if you know you brought them back from the Lyme infested east coast.

 

I'm not sure what the right answer is but when my daughter was bitten, our doctor put her on a dose of minocycline and azithromycin immediately (3 days per week) plus flagyl on the weekend for about 8 weeks.. Daughter did have a circular bruise greater than 5cm around a red bite mark. Her tests later came back CDC positive.

 

It's a personal decision but personally I wouldn't wait for symptoms. Knowing he was bitten is good though in that at least if he shows mild symptoms of any type you'll have the upper hand. Many of us have children who never had symptoms that we remember until everything was chronic (my son falling into this category).

 

This site is your friend for travel: http://bedbugregistry.com/

 

I have no financial or personal interest with the site - I do use it every time I travel.

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I completely agree to treat the bite. I understand Red if you live in an area where you are bitten frequently that this could pose difficulty, and maybe you do get some type of immunity from repeaated exposure. But my older daughter has been so devasated by Lyme I would not hesitate to treat a bite with 3-4 weeks of abx. We just found a bullseye on my 3 yr old and she is on 6 weeks of abx, and I have made an appt for her with Dr. J - cannot go through this/let one of my kids go through this again.

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I completely agree to treat the bite. I understand Red if you live in an area where you are bitten frequently that this could pose difficulty, and maybe you do get some type of immunity from repeaated exposure. But my older daughter has been so devasated by Lyme I would not hesitate to treat a bite with 3-4 weeks of abx. We just found a bullseye on my 3 yr old and she is on 6 weeks of abx, and I have made an appt for her with Dr. J - cannot go through this/let one of my kids go through this again.

Well I drop dead agree with treating a bullseye. That is a classic symptom as far as I am concerned. My wife some 6 years ago had classic Lyme symptoms in the summer without a bullseye. She had a fever with severe joint pain and headaches within days of removing a tick. Doxy knocked it right out so it must have been Lyme.

I am saying that unless someone has symptoms from the tick bite then you do not treat it. I say that with the irony that I had a large expanding rash and treated it moderately aggressively with 200 mg Doxy twice a day for 3 weeks. I still got bart. Now whether Lyme was present (the expanding rash???) I do not know. So I treated what I considered a classic Lyme symptom that being an expanding rash that started 2 days after tick removal. It was a week or two after starting antibiotics that the profound fatigue set in.

But I still stand by the statement that without rash or other symptoms then you do not treat every tick bite. Overuse of antibiotics is big problem in our culture.

I have a neighbor who I swear had classic Lyme for the past couple of years. I was begging her to see my LLMD. She would hang on my car window complaining of fatigue and joint pain and brain fog. I was going nuts trying to get her to move on it. Then one fateful day about 6 weeks ago pow she has a large rash from a tick bite. Good news is her regular doc said forget the test and jump on the doxy. Well low and behold the doxy for this latest bullseye completely knocked out all her previous symptoms. How lucky can one person be. Kill two birds (Lyme) with one stone. I swear this is a true story.

Red

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Just thought it worth highlighting on the overuse argument (although I do still agree in judicious use in humans too)

 

 

"A scary stat from the battle against drug-resistant superbugs: measured by weight, 80% of antibiotics are given to farm animals.

 

That stat comes via the blog maintained via the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Ralph Loglisci, a project director at the Center, wanted context for a stat that was unearthed by Wired blogger Maryn McKenna: that 28.8 million pounds of antibiotics are sold for agricultural use in the United States.

 

How, Loglisci wondered, does that compare to human medical use? He asked the Food and Drug Administration. A spokeswoman told him that patients are given 7.3 million pounds of antibiotics for medical use — hence the 80% figure.

 

The Livable Future blog has a breakdown of how much of various antibiotics are given to livestock — usually not to fight infection but because the antibiotics make the animals bulk up faster. One might quibble that this count include ionophores, which might not always be antibiotics. But, then again, the amount of tetracycline given to animals outweighs — literally — all of the antibiotics taken by people. That’s a shocking statistic.

 

The problem with all this livestock use is it kills bacteria that are susceptible to antibiotics, leaving those that are more resistant to fill the gap. This is especially a problem because drug companies are having a tough time inventing new drugs to replace those that are losing their usefulness because of rising rates of resistance."

 

From...

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2010/12/28/80-of-antibotics-go-to-farm-animals/

 

 

Thankfully the FDA has finally put in place some measures to attemtp to combat the non medical uses, too little IMHO and 30 years late after recognising the problem in the 70s but ho-hum....

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I completely agree to treat the bite. I understand Red if you live in an area where you are bitten frequently that this could pose difficulty, and maybe you do get some type of immunity from repeaated exposure. But my older daughter has been so devasated by Lyme I would not hesitate to treat a bite with 3-4 weeks of abx. We just found a bullseye on my 3 yr old and she is on 6 weeks of abx, and I have made an appt for her with Dr. J - cannot go through this/let one of my kids go through this again.

Well I drop dead agree with treating a bullseye. That is a classic symptom as far as I am concerned. My wife some 6 years ago had classic Lyme symptoms in the summer without a bullseye. She had a fever with severe joint pain and headaches within days of removing a tick. Doxy knocked it right out so it must have been Lyme.

I am saying that unless someone has symptoms from the tick bite then you do not treat it. I say that with the irony that I had a large expanding rash and treated it moderately aggressively with 200 mg Doxy twice a day for 3 weeks. I still got bart. Now whether Lyme was present (the expanding rash???) I do not know. So I treated what I considered a classic Lyme symptom that being an expanding rash that started 2 days after tick removal. It was a week or two after starting antibiotics that the profound fatigue set in.

But I still stand by the statement that without rash or other symptoms then you do not treat every tick bite. Overuse of antibiotics is big problem in our culture.

I have a neighbor who I swear had classic Lyme for the past couple of years. I was begging her to see my LLMD. She would hang on my car window complaining of fatigue and joint pain and brain fog. I was going nuts trying to get her to move on it. Then one fateful day about 6 weeks ago pow she has a large rash from a tick bite. Good news is her regular doc said forget the test and jump on the doxy. Well low and behold the doxy for this latest bullseye completely knocked out all her previous symptoms. How lucky can one person be. Kill two birds (Lyme) with one stone. I swear this is a true story.

Red

 

I understand what you are saying but it is not clear to me that children or even adults will always show symptoms of any type after a bite from an infected tick. I wish we could have given my son a couple of weeks of ABX and all would have been right with the world. But children are different. We are coming up on two years to fix my son. I don't know that he has infection anymore but the neurological impacts have a long way to go to heal.

 

And thanks to Dut for posting the information on the use of ABX with farm animals. I immediately had the same thought.

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I completely agree to treat the bite. I understand Red if you live in an area where you are bitten frequently that this could pose difficulty, and maybe you do get some type of immunity from repeaated exposure. But my older daughter has been so devasated by Lyme I would not hesitate to treat a bite with 3-4 weeks of abx. We just found a bullseye on my 3 yr old and she is on 6 weeks of abx, and I have made an appt for her with Dr. J - cannot go through this/let one of my kids go through this again.

Well I drop dead agree with treating a bullseye. That is a classic symptom as far as I am concerned. My wife some 6 years ago had classic Lyme symptoms in the summer without a bullseye. She had a fever with severe joint pain and headaches within days of removing a tick. Doxy knocked it right out so it must have been Lyme.

I am saying that unless someone has symptoms from the tick bite then you do not treat it. I say that with the irony that I had a large expanding rash and treated it moderately aggressively with 200 mg Doxy twice a day for 3 weeks. I still got bart. Now whether Lyme was present (the expanding rash???) I do not know. So I treated what I considered a classic Lyme symptom that being an expanding rash that started 2 days after tick removal. It was a week or two after starting antibiotics that the profound fatigue set in.

But I still stand by the statement that without rash or other symptoms then you do not treat every tick bite. Overuse of antibiotics is big problem in our culture.

I have a neighbor who I swear had classic Lyme for the past couple of years. I was begging her to see my LLMD. She would hang on my car window complaining of fatigue and joint pain and brain fog. I was going nuts trying to get her to move on it. Then one fateful day about 6 weeks ago pow she has a large rash from a tick bite. Good news is her regular doc said forget the test and jump on the doxy. Well low and behold the doxy for this latest bullseye completely knocked out all her previous symptoms. How lucky can one person be. Kill two birds (Lyme) with one stone. I swear this is a true story.

Red

 

I understand what you are saying but it is not clear to me that children or even adults will always show symptoms of any type after a bite from an infected tick. I wish we could have given my son a couple of weeks of ABX and all would have been right with the world. But children are different. We are coming up on two years to fix my son. I don't know that he has infection anymore but the neurological impacts have a long way to go to heal.

 

And thanks to Dut for posting the information on the use of ABX with farm animals. I immediately had the same thought.

We have the same problem with humans using too many antibiotics. Drug resistance is not just from farm animals but also getting worse because antibiotics have been given out like candy at halloween. With hundreds of thousands of people getting probably millions of tick bites a year you cannot just give out antibiotics prophylactically for every tick bite just on a very small chance that a few will get sick. Look at what has happened with antibacterial soap causing drug resistance. People want this fortress around us that is germ free but that model does not work.

Red

Red

Edited by red
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I completely agree to treat the bite. I understand Red if you live in an area where you are bitten frequently that this could pose difficulty, and maybe you do get some type of immunity from repeaated exposure. But my older daughter has been so devasated by Lyme I would not hesitate to treat a bite with 3-4 weeks of abx. We just found a bullseye on my 3 yr old and she is on 6 weeks of abx, and I have made an appt for her with Dr. J - cannot go through this/let one of my kids go through this again.

Well I drop dead agree with treating a bullseye. That is a classic symptom as far as I am concerned. My wife some 6 years ago had classic Lyme symptoms in the summer without a bullseye. She had a fever with severe joint pain and headaches within days of removing a tick. Doxy knocked it right out so it must have been Lyme.

I am saying that unless someone has symptoms from the tick bite then you do not treat it. I say that with the irony that I had a large expanding rash and treated it moderately aggressively with 200 mg Doxy twice a day for 3 weeks. I still got bart. Now whether Lyme was present (the expanding rash???) I do not know. So I treated what I considered a classic Lyme symptom that being an expanding rash that started 2 days after tick removal. It was a week or two after starting antibiotics that the profound fatigue set in.

But I still stand by the statement that without rash or other symptoms then you do not treat every tick bite. Overuse of antibiotics is big problem in our culture.

I have a neighbor who I swear had classic Lyme for the past couple of years. I was begging her to see my LLMD. She would hang on my car window complaining of fatigue and joint pain and brain fog. I was going nuts trying to get her to move on it. Then one fateful day about 6 weeks ago pow she has a large rash from a tick bite. Good news is her regular doc said forget the test and jump on the doxy. Well low and behold the doxy for this latest bullseye completely knocked out all her previous symptoms. How lucky can one person be. Kill two birds (Lyme) with one stone. I swear this is a true story.

Red

 

I understand what you are saying but it is not clear to me that children or even adults will always show symptoms of any type after a bite from an infected tick. I wish we could have given my son a couple of weeks of ABX and all would have been right with the world. But children are different. We are coming up on two years to fix my son. I don't know that he has infection anymore but the neurological impacts have a long way to go to heal.

 

And thanks to Dut for posting the information on the use of ABX with farm animals. I immediately had the same thought.

We have the same problem with humans using too many antibiotics. Drug resistance is not just from farm animals but also getting worse because antibiotics have been given out like candy at halloween. With hundreds of thousands of people getting probably millions of tick bites a year you cannot just give out antibiotics prophylactically for every tick bite just on a very small chance that a few will get sick. Look at what has happened with antibacterial soap causing drug resistance. People want this fortress around us that is germ free but that model does not work.

Red

Red

Wow. You're on a forum where many have had to beg, plead, cry, in attempt to get antibiotics for their children, only to be at times refused - whether it be PANDAS/Lyme. When the physicians in my daughter's pediatrician's office comment about my daughter's overuse of abx, I tell them I wouldn't need to rely on daily abx if they would have treated her when she got a tick bite 6 years ago. I brought her in with joint pain but since there was no bullseye rash...no treatment.

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As a Mom who has been in pediatric offices consistantly for the last 14 1/2 years, quite a few different practices, things have really changed about prescribing antibiotics.

When my son was an infant/toddler in daycares catching everything, he got antibiotics easily.

 

But in the last 10 years, the Dr.s absolutely do NOT want to give them out- signs on the walls indicating viruses will not get them, your kid can be leaking green hacking cough and a 4 day temp @ 102, and they tell you to wait and see. Come back. Wait and see.

Before Lyme dx a year ago, I never went to the Dr.- never-- couldn't remember a time on antibiotics. Finally came down with a long standing sinus infection, fever, horrific,

I got refused antibiotics. Could not believe it. I was really upset. It was like I was asking for OxyContin.

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P.S. original poster:

If it were me, I'd treat the bite with Doxy, if too young Amoxicillin, short Tindamax if I could get it.

30-45 days on an antibiotic is a walk in the park compared to chronic Lyme and co.

Did you send the ticks in?

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madhu- you can go to tickencounter.org to identify the ticks in your region and learn about the different cycles or stages. They have a great website for this. Also, TBDAlliance.org.

 

In the mid-atlantic (where I'm located) the larvae deer tick is what's out right now, for the most part. You can identify the larvae tick with a magnifying glass. The larvae ticks hatch in mass quantity from eggs, but they are pathogen free. They are six legged ticks. After their first feeding- usually with the white footed mouse (where they pick up the pathogens), they molt and become nymphs (April-August) and now have eight legs. These are the ticks that most people get lyme disease from, since they are easily missed. The nymphal ticks feed on squirrels, dogs/cats, humans, exc. and then emerge in late Sept/October as an adult tick for another feeding (deer, humans, exc). By this stage the tick is more likely to carry the lyme bacteria (and whatever else it picked up), but you are also more likely to see the tick embedded and hopefully remove it before its content is transmitted. The cycle then starts over again with the next batch of eggs- it's a two year cycle. It goes something like this. Oh, and females and males are different sizes as well. So, if you still have the ticks, you could identify whether they were larvae ticks (pathogen free- 6 legs) or nymphal ticks (8 legs) by using a magnifying glass. Adult ticks become active next month.

 

Most cases of Lyme disease is transmitted between April-early August (but not all). Adult ticks can remain active throughout the winter whenever the ground is not frozen.

 

I would not ignore a tick bite from an nymphal or adult tick!

Edited by philamom
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I completely agree to treat the bite. I understand Red if you live in an area where you are bitten frequently that this could pose difficulty, and maybe you do get some type of immunity from repeaated exposure. But my older daughter has been so devasated by Lyme I would not hesitate to treat a bite with 3-4 weeks of abx. We just found a bullseye on my 3 yr old and she is on 6 weeks of abx, and I have made an appt for her with Dr. J - cannot go through this/let one of my kids go through this again.

Well I drop dead agree with treating a bullseye. That is a classic symptom as far as I am concerned. My wife some 6 years ago had classic Lyme symptoms in the summer without a bullseye. She had a fever with severe joint pain and headaches within days of removing a tick. Doxy knocked it right out so it must have been Lyme.

I am saying that unless someone has symptoms from the tick bite then you do not treat it. I say that with the irony that I had a large expanding rash and treated it moderately aggressively with 200 mg Doxy twice a day for 3 weeks. I still got bart. Now whether Lyme was present (the expanding rash???) I do not know. So I treated what I considered a classic Lyme symptom that being an expanding rash that started 2 days after tick removal. It was a week or two after starting antibiotics that the profound fatigue set in.

But I still stand by the statement that without rash or other symptoms then you do not treat every tick bite. Overuse of antibiotics is big problem in our culture.

I have a neighbor who I swear had classic Lyme for the past couple of years. I was begging her to see my LLMD. She would hang on my car window complaining of fatigue and joint pain and brain fog. I was going nuts trying to get her to move on it. Then one fateful day about 6 weeks ago pow she has a large rash from a tick bite. Good news is her regular doc said forget the test and jump on the doxy. Well low and behold the doxy for this latest bullseye completely knocked out all her previous symptoms. How lucky can one person be. Kill two birds (Lyme) with one stone. I swear this is a true story.

Red

 

I understand what you are saying but it is not clear to me that children or even adults will always show symptoms of any type after a bite from an infected tick. I wish we could have given my son a couple of weeks of ABX and all would have been right with the world. But children are different. We are coming up on two years to fix my son. I don't know that he has infection anymore but the neurological impacts have a long way to go to heal.

 

And thanks to Dut for posting the information on the use of ABX with farm animals. I immediately had the same thought.

We have the same problem with humans using too many antibiotics. Drug resistance is not just from farm animals but also getting worse because antibiotics have been given out like candy at halloween. With hundreds of thousands of people getting probably millions of tick bites a year you cannot just give out antibiotics prophylactically for every tick bite just on a very small chance that a few will get sick. Look at what has happened with antibacterial soap causing drug resistance. People want this fortress around us that is germ free but that model does not work.

Red

Red

Wow. You're on a forum where many have had to beg, plead, cry, in attempt to get antibiotics for their children, only to be at times refused - whether it be PANDAS/Lyme. When the physicians in my daughter's pediatrician's office comment about my daughter's overuse of abx, I tell them I wouldn't need to rely on daily abx if they would have treated her when she got a tick bite 6 years ago. I brought her in with joint pain but since there was no bullseye rash...no treatment.

"Wow"? I think you are confusing me with your Lyme illiterate doctor refusing treatment based on solid evidence that you presented many years ago. That solid evidence is the mother who knows the child better than anyone, telling the pediatrician that "my daughter had a tick bite and is now complaining about joint pain". For me that is solid reason to treat the child. What I have been saying all along is that we should not put anybody and everybody on antibiotics the moment they have a tick bite. That is quite different than the story you tell. I could write on forever about the LLMDs who misdiagnosed me with Lyme 8 years ago but it was mold. They fed me antibiotics like candy and kept telling that the severe reactions I experienced was "herxing" which is a good thing that kept saying. I was experiencing multiple chemical sensitivity from the mold/abx. Should I mention that due to inappropriate abx that I was suicidal? Its a 2 way street and abx is not the be all to end all. And I could write on about the 2 different MDs who I saw last year out of state and out of pocket who did find bartonella but also found a way into my bank account to the tune of $10K for all the marked up tests/supplements/office visits and phone consults. Luckily for me I found a LLMD locally who my psychiatrist referred. I also went to a very large University based medical center where I ran a clinic myself for 16 years and saw their supposed "specialist" in bartonella. He told me flat out I no have bart. He said bart is "always" a self limiting disease except in HIV. And he rejected the PCR/DNA analysis from Galaxy Diagnostics as a "lab error" even though he admitted he never heard of Galaxy diagnostics nor Dr. Edward Breitschwerdt who is an infectious disease doctor at NCSU Vet school. He also was not aware that this genius in bartonella (over 130 peer reviewed papers on bart) also has a dual appointment in the infectious disease department of the same University medical school office I was sitting. My grand nephew was just diagnosed with PANDAS by Dr. Bouboulis. I am very aware of the h**l my niece is living right know with this PANDAS child.

I stand by my statement: having a tick bite does not lead to automatic antibiotic treatment.

The problem with doctors is they often do not listen to their patients.

Red

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