The unusual case of the winter tick

I checked the calendar - yep, December.  I checked the temperature outside - a chilly 38 degrees.  Yet there I was, staring at what was clearly a tick, engorged and securely attached to my son’s scalp about an inch above the hairline on the back of his head.  He has been playing outside a lot lately, running through yards and hiding near shrubs and trees during games of tag with his friends.  I could accept some scrapes, bumps, bruises, etc., but a tick bite?  In late December?  This was not on my radar.  During the warmer months, my wife and I make a point of inspecting our kids’ scalps for little critters like this - we’re not exactly paranoid about it, but we try to be vigilant.  Which is why we were caught off-guard by this.  We weren’t looking for it.

Alas, there it was.  The next step of course, was removing the little bugger.  I know the technique; I grabbed my tweezers and started to pull straight back but it was painful for my son; the tick’s head was really buried under his skin, and it was hard to pull on the tick without grabbing a couple of hair follicles.  After a few minutes of trying, I decided to get some professional help.  We drove over to the local MinuteClinic (a truly great invention in health care delivery, in my opinion), where the nurse practitioner applied a topical anesthetic - and was able to gently but firmly extract the tick in one piece.  She took a good look at it, consulted a large binder with lots of juicy medical pictures, and informed us that it was not a deer tick, but we might consider an antibiotic as a precaution.  The patient was cleaned up, and we were sent on our way.

Lesson learned: It may be cold outside, but the ticks can still get ya’!