Jul 15, 2011 – Ticks And Lumps
QUESTION:
I recently went to Arkansas and while there I picked up a c-tick (that's what they call it). I seem to have brought it home and it was embedded in my side. I used tweezers to remove it but now there's a hard lump there. Should I have that looked at? I feel fine, but it does annoy me.
ANSWER:
I tried Googling "c-tick" to see if I could find this local name for what you acquired, and it did not offer anything. So, the nearest I can suggest is that perhaps you heard them call it a "seed" tick, which is a normal name given for the first instar stage of ticks. This stage is also referred to as the Larva stage of the tick, and in this stage it is only 6-legged and extremely small, but a blood feeder nonetheless. It just becomes much harder to spot when you examine yourself for ticks.
As with the other stages of most hard ticks this larva stage finds a blood host, crawls to a place on the body that seems like a good feeding site, inserts its mouthparts, and settles in for a few days of ingesting your blood. And, like nearly all blood-sucking arthropods, it uses its saliva to numb the area before inserting its mouthparts and to keep the blood flowing. This saliva has two properties that can be a concern. The first is that it often contains a venom that can cause Tick Paralysis in some people, which is a condition that can actually cause severe weakening in the legs and arms and even more serious problems. However, this normally begins within just a few days after the tick attaches, and if you have not experienced this yet then it would seem your body did not react in this manner.
The other property of tick saliva is that it is protein in nature, and our bodies do not like "foreign" proteins in our body. Our immune systems react to reject or isolate foreign substances, and this is one reason we get that itchy bump from a mosquito bite. The area around the bite of a tick or flea or bed bug or mosquito swells up, and it all likelihood this is all you are feeling now. Since it does not appear to be causing you any pain or inflammation it sounds like just a normal reaction, but you definitely should keep a close eye on it, and if it continues to stay there over the next couple of weeks or begins to get larger then you should see a doctor right away. Once the tick is removed the flow of saliva is ended and the area should return to normal.
Another possibility is that when you removed the tick you may have left some small part of the tick behind, and if the head of the tick were still in the skin it could be much like a sliver, where the body isolates that foreign material and eventually rejects it. If the tick had been settled in and feeding for a few days then the skin may have swelled around its head, and this could be broken off if you quickly yanked the tick off with the tweezers. A recommended way to remove it is with sharp-pointed tweezers and a slow, steady pull to cause it to detach. So for now just keep an eye on the area and hopefully the lump will gradually disappear. It is a good idea to keep the tick itself in a jar with rubbing alcohol so that if your symptoms do worsen you can take the tick along with you and it can be examined as well. If it turns out to be one of the Ixodes (deer tick) species that would be a greater concern for a problem like Lyme Disease.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
I recently went to Arkansas and while there I picked up a c-tick (that's what they call it). I seem to have brought it home and it was embedded in my side. I used tweezers to remove it but now there's a hard lump there. Should I have that looked at? I feel fine, but it does annoy me.
ANSWER:
I tried Googling "c-tick" to see if I could find this local name for what you acquired, and it did not offer anything. So, the nearest I can suggest is that perhaps you heard them call it a "seed" tick, which is a normal name given for the first instar stage of ticks. This stage is also referred to as the Larva stage of the tick, and in this stage it is only 6-legged and extremely small, but a blood feeder nonetheless. It just becomes much harder to spot when you examine yourself for ticks.
As with the other stages of most hard ticks this larva stage finds a blood host, crawls to a place on the body that seems like a good feeding site, inserts its mouthparts, and settles in for a few days of ingesting your blood. And, like nearly all blood-sucking arthropods, it uses its saliva to numb the area before inserting its mouthparts and to keep the blood flowing. This saliva has two properties that can be a concern. The first is that it often contains a venom that can cause Tick Paralysis in some people, which is a condition that can actually cause severe weakening in the legs and arms and even more serious problems. However, this normally begins within just a few days after the tick attaches, and if you have not experienced this yet then it would seem your body did not react in this manner.
The other property of tick saliva is that it is protein in nature, and our bodies do not like "foreign" proteins in our body. Our immune systems react to reject or isolate foreign substances, and this is one reason we get that itchy bump from a mosquito bite. The area around the bite of a tick or flea or bed bug or mosquito swells up, and it all likelihood this is all you are feeling now. Since it does not appear to be causing you any pain or inflammation it sounds like just a normal reaction, but you definitely should keep a close eye on it, and if it continues to stay there over the next couple of weeks or begins to get larger then you should see a doctor right away. Once the tick is removed the flow of saliva is ended and the area should return to normal.
Another possibility is that when you removed the tick you may have left some small part of the tick behind, and if the head of the tick were still in the skin it could be much like a sliver, where the body isolates that foreign material and eventually rejects it. If the tick had been settled in and feeding for a few days then the skin may have swelled around its head, and this could be broken off if you quickly yanked the tick off with the tweezers. A recommended way to remove it is with sharp-pointed tweezers and a slow, steady pull to cause it to detach. So for now just keep an eye on the area and hopefully the lump will gradually disappear. It is a good idea to keep the tick itself in a jar with rubbing alcohol so that if your symptoms do worsen you can take the tick along with you and it can be examined as well. If it turns out to be one of the Ixodes (deer tick) species that would be a greater concern for a problem like Lyme Disease.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
