[obol] Re: Lake County day for ECAS Wednesday Birding and TICK report
- From: Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>
- To: Central Oregon Birders <cobol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Oregon Birders OnLine <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 07:22:50 -0700
Thanks Judy for the good report, sounds like it was a fantastic day out
there!
I noticed this one non-bird on your day list:
1 wood tick, so everyone check tonight!
and I'd just like to underscore how serious this is, as an issue for
birders, especially this time of year.
About five years ago at the Corvallis Co-op I ran into one of our local
birders & botanists who had previously been very active, riding mountain
bike, hiking etc. and even helping with the Wheeler migration count one
year. Then she stopped doing all of that stuff and kind of disappeared.
I asked her what had happened, and she said she'd gone through a
struggle with Lyme's disease, initially undiagnosed, that had lasted for
a couple of years.
Then a couple of years after that, I wound up spending most of the month
of July flat on my back with a cyclic high fever. Finally I was referred
to an infectious disease specialist who deduced that I most likely had a
tick-borne illness.
During May & June of that year I'd been birding in tick habitat in
different areas of two different continents, so there were about five
tick-borne illnesses to choose from. The specialist warned that tests to
determine which one could have run into the thousands of dollars, and he
couldn't guarantee they would be conclusive.
So I went with his cheaper alternative suggestion: a $3 bottle of
heavy-duty antibiotics. They were truly nasty but did the trick. The
fever ramped down and I was back on my feet in three days -- but only
after losing a full month away from work and birding.
Just two weeks ago, the Corvallis paper ran the obituary of another
Corvallis woman who died at age 43, citing "chronic Lyme disease" as the
cause of death. Chronic Lyme is a controversial topic in the medical
community, but I'll say this much for sure:
Those tiny little 8-legged critters can have a very big impact on your
life.
So anytime you're out birding in places where you're moving through
vegetation (in other words, just about any kind of birding where you get
out of the car), good to take Judy's advice and do a tick check!
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
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