Sarah Phillips’ daughter, Emily, is awake and smiling now. It’s a big difference from a few days ago.
“I could barely keep her awake,” said Phillips. “She was falling asleep on me, I had to carry her everywhere, she was so lethargic, I have never seen anybody so tired.”
Earlier this month a tick burrowed into the back of her leg while she was out for a walk along the Seine River in Southdale, a well-developed neighbourhood in south Winnipeg.
Her mom found it two days later, pulled it out and threw it away. For two weeks she was a typical 4-year-old.
Then out of nowhere she got sick, and a rash developed where the tick was. It took six doctors to determine she had Lyme Disease.
“It was scary,” said Phillips. “You know that something is wrong and at first they thought maybe it was the flu because the symptoms are the same but I kept saying explain that mark, that wood tick mark. That’s where it gave it away.”
Phillips believes the tick came from the banks of the Seine River, where they were looking for frog eggs. The area is right across the street from an established residential area and a school.
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The area has tall grass and a lot of trees; the perfect environment for bugs.
“They will climb up on grass, usually to the tips of that grass and then wait for an animal to come by so they can attach,” said Dr. Robbin Lindsay, a tick expert with the Public Health Agency of Canada.
There were 25 reported cases of Lyme Disease in Manitoba last year. It takes 24 to 36 hours for a Blacklegged tick to infect a person.
“The bacteria that causes Lyme is actually in the gut of the tick and as it starts to feed the bacteria replicates, moves to the saliva,” said Lindsay.
Now on antibiotics, Emily will be perfectly fine because she was diagnosed early.
“I just want parents to know to check their kids every day, every day because we were in the city,” said Phillips. “It’s not like we were out in the country. We were just here in the city, across from the school playing in a bush.”
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