I'm so pissed!! So many people I know have fucking Lyme's disease!! And no one says shit!! They don't even know how to treat it. Fuck!!
This stupid country just lets people fucking die and get disabled everyday. I'm sick of it. My tax dollars just go to killing and dismembering people abroad. Fuck fuck fuck.
Not OP, but around here, getting bitten by ticks is very common. Almost everyone I knew who liked being outdoorsy had been bitten at least once, and usually had several tick-bite stories. If you don't do a thorough tick check after every hike or jaunt into weeds or woods, you're playing roulette and will get one before too long. I myself have had to pull ticks out of me probably around 10-15 times (mostly as a kid when I was less careful when out hiking).
edit to add: Even when you're careful, ticks can still be easy to miss and you can still get bitten. The little fuckers are notorious for how sneaky they can be. I didn't mean the above to imply that someone who gets bit is at fault for not being careful enough, because it still can happen sometimes even when you take precautions, it just becomes much less likely.
This is why I always wear long pants and shirts while on a hike. Learnt this lesson as a 15 year old during a 3 day 60km hike. Our group all got bitten by ticks sometime on day 2, walking though tall grass in shorts and short socks.
Bafflingly, I have never gotten a tick despite being in situations where everyone else does. Mosquitoes love me though :( (leeches and ticks seem to avoid me idk why)
might be a regional thing, i looked this up and am deep in the blue:
can't really say this is clearly indicative of tick bites overall since i think our ticks are just more infected, but it's probably a combination of both
I'm a fellow mosquito magnet. I've pulled one deer tick off my after a whole lot of hiking (and literal thousands of mosquito bites regardless of what measures I try to take against them)
Never gone wading through the bayou to see how leeches like me though
In Australia I've spent some time in more tropical areas (Queensland), no leeches, including just faffing about in swamps and stuff. Also just slept on the ground in more semi-arid areas (SW WA), and gotten no ticks despite everyone else getting them. On the other hand, people have spotted me with a cloud of mosquitoes around me, and I've gotten over 300 in one night. idk what's going on