Now that spring has sprung, children are spending their days carelessly playing outside. Parents do their best to make sure kids are protected, with sunblock, band-aids, you name it. However, there is something else that parents should be doing which is even more crucial.
Checking for ticks is essential, due to its connections to Lyme disease. Lyme disease is an extremely serious illness that you get from black-legged tick bites that carry the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi
It is very important to note the common symptoms, so you can spot it and get medical attention right away. According to the Center for disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the symptoms can vary widely on a case-to-case basis, but there are some easy symptoms to identify.
The easiest to identify and most well known symptom is the erythema migrans (EM) rash, which is mainly known as the “bull’s-eye” rash. This rash is so common that it appears in approximately 70 to 80 percent of people infected with Lyme Disease.
Lots of people misdiagnose these tick bites as spider or mosquito bites, even though there is a huge difference in severity. Luckily, there are other symptoms that the CDC lists, such as fever, headache, fatigue, chills, muscle and joint aches, and swollen lymph nodes.
