These days, everyone seems to have a tick story, and not all of them have happy endings.
In the Adirondack Explorer, reporter Cayte Bosler recently wrote about the rise of tick-borne diseases in the north. She writes: “The black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis, also known as the deer tick, transmits up to seven different diseases, many of those on the rise, as the tiny arachnids creep farther into areas they previously were not.”
Many of you have shared your insights for preventing tick bites, and now we want to hear from you again: What are your experiences with illnesses transmitted by tick bites? Have you seen a spike of ticks in your area? If, so please share where you live/are seeing ticks. If we’re able to get a strong sense of where ticks are spreading, we plan to collect this information for future Explorer reporting and possibly mapping the data.
Share your experiences here or send an email to melissa@adirondackexplorer.org.
Photo: Professor Lee Ann Sporn collects ticks in 2020. Sporn has been conducting field studies on ticks in northern New York for eight years. Explorer file photo by Gwendolyn Craig
Get ticked off
Since 2016, a nonstop avalanche of new findings on Lyme has crushed a lot of long-held beliefs about this disease. It is regularly misdiagnosed, harder to treat than one might assume, and can debilitate a person for months or years. In a few instances, its effects last a lifetime. Lyme is a huge – perhaps the biggest – health risk to farmers, forestry workers and others whose jobs are principally outdoors. In this first of a three-part series, I hope to correct some misunderstandings about Lyme disease, and explore why it’s so hard to diagnose.
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