Seven counties in Alabama are considered endemic for Lyme disease by the Alabama Department of Public Health.
Advertisement
The problem with diagnosing Lyme disease, however, is that the screening process for the condition is not very effective.
“If you see a tick crawling across your body and it’s not engorged with blood, you haven’t been bitten”, Stark said. It’s quite distinctive. This is followed by flu-like symptoms – tiredness, achey muscles and a high temperature.
“I was told I didn’t have Lyme disease exclusively based off the fact that I live in Alabama and I hadn’t traveled up to the northeast” says Hodges.
She eventually saw a psychologist who was familiar with Lyme disease, and recognised the symptoms.
While the area “continues to be a hot spot for all of our tick-borne diseases”, she said the rate of infection of the Cape and islands appears to have stabilized in recent years.
These ticks are especially found in urban parks. What does Lyme disease look and feel like?
Lyme disease is transmitted through tick bites and is often identified by a spreading rash, fever, headache, and feeling exhausted. And mum-of-two Ruth Black, 34, from Hutton, spent eight months battling the disease in 2010.
A few. Avril Lavigne, Selena Gomez, Bella Hadid and Phones 4U’s billionaire founder John Caudwell all suffer from Lyme disease. “No matter where you are in Massachusetts, there is a possibility that a tick that gets on you is carrying at least one and up to three illnesses”, said Brown, referring to Lyme and two other less-common, but increasingly prevalent illnesses, anaplasmosis and babesiosis.
The number of confirmed cases of Lyme Disease in the United Kingdom has quadrupled in just 12 years, with more than 1,000 people diagnosed with the condition in 2013.
Ally added: ‘People do need long-term antibiotic treatment.
Current estimates put the actual figure at around 3,000 cases a year in England and Wales.
“I at one point was not able to have a conversation, say sentences, I was not able to talk, too weak to the point that I could not move, felt like I was too weak to breathe” says Carrye Hodges.
Advertisement
Howard Carter, a bite protection expert, said the number of ticks were increasing estimates there has been a 10% rise in the tick population in the past two decades which he attributes to warmer and wetter weather as a result of climate change.
