Lyme Disease and Aquidneck Island
Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness, sometimes characterized by a “bulls-eye” rash, followed by flu-like symptoms, fever, fatigue and body aches and, if not treated, joint swelling and other persistent neurologic symptoms such as mood swings and memory loss. Some 9,000 cases were identified in 1991, most of them in and around New England. Other cases soon cropped up across the nation. Most patients, it was discovered, lived near deer habitats. In Rhode Island, the first cases of Lyme disease showed up on Prudence Island, quickly followed by cases in South County and on Aquidneck Island. By 2002, the number had swelled nationally to 25,000 cases, and the cause had been isolated.
Lyme disease is difficult to diagnose definitively. Although it is, for most patients, easily treated with a course of antibiotics, Lyme disease can lead to arthritis or other long-term health problems if not diagnosed and treated early in the course of the disease.
More than 15 years after Lyme disease was first identified, it is reassuring to know that the disease is somewhat hard to contract:
- You must be bitten by a deer tick or black-legged tick that is infected with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Almost all cases are contracted in spring or early summer, when the tick is in the nymph form and very tiny – smaller than the bullet at the beginning of this paragraph, or about as large as a sesame seed.
- The tick must be attached for at least a day – closer to 36 to 48 hours
– before it can transmit the disease.
 How can you overlook a tick attached to your body for 36 or more hours? The tick burrows into hard-to-see places: the scalp, the groin, the armpits, in the back at the belt line. Often the first sign is a “bulls-eye” rash, erythma migrans, which appears at the site of the bite and gradually grows larger. If you see the bulls-eye rash, call your physician promptly.
Not all Lyme disease patients are warned by the characteristic rash and shrug off subsequent flu-like symptoms. Physicians practicing in a Lyme-prone region will suspect the disease even without the bulls-eye rash when the other symptoms are present, and they will treat the patient accordingly.
The best way to deal with Lyme disease is to prevent it.
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