I just happened to glance in the mirror as I was washing my hands this evening. I saw what I assumed to be a tiny piece of food on my neck (I’m not a neat eater, so that happens sometimes). I scraped at it. It didn’t come off, so I scraped harder until I finally got it onto my finger. Normally I would have simply flicked the speck toward the trash, but since I couldn’t remember having eaten anything dark and flaky, I looked at it first. That’s when I realized it was actually a nymphal tick. Ick!
This was really upsetting, because I didn’t spend that much time outside today, and I was fairly careful. I wasn’t careful enough, though, and that’s bad. Most nymphs are infected with Lyme. Our children’s doctor told us that the rates are so high in our area that they just assume every tick has it. If I hadn’t looked in the mirror just when I did, that tiny little thing would have gotten in my hair. It would have sucked my blood and infected me, and I never would have known.
Trying to look on the bright side:
- It’s not the ticks you find on you that are the problem, but rather the ones you don’t find. Finding this one was not a bad thing. It was a very good thing.
- I got to use the word “fomes.” That’s how I mentally referred to my clothing as I was throwing it into the washing machine. “Fomes” (pronounced “foe-meeze,” pl. “fomites”) is any item or material that could have disease-causing agents on it. I like knowing weird words. Weird words are good.
- I looked the word up to make sure that I was using it correctly. I couldn’t find it in many dictionaries. It seems to have been replaced with “fomite” (pronounced “foe-mite,” pl. “fomites”). That doesn’t surprise me, because nobody likes a singular noun that sounds plural, especially if it has an irregular plural. Now I know to use the more modern and totally hip “fomite.” I learned something new, and that’s a good thing, too.