Katy had a Tick!!!

So last night after dinner, I'm on the phone with my mom, trying to finish all this blogging I've been doing, (I put up a lot of new ones but I dated them so you'll need to go see some that I put up that come before some that you may have already seen.) and Katy has to come sit on my lap.  She doesn't really like me on the computer and was ready for me to be off.  I happen to look at her hair and notice what looks to me like a piece of oreo cookie under her hair.

I have her hair in pigtails and it wasn't there when I put them in that morning but you know, she's a baby, they get food everywhere.  I'm thinking, "How did it get under your hair!  You haven't even had oreo's today."  So I'm just talking to my mom and trying to get this "cookie" out of her hair.  I get it out of her hair and go to flick it on the ground and it won't come off my finger.

That is when I realized that it was a bug.  I squish it and it kind of quits moving.  I'm telling my mom about this weird bug when it starts moving again.  I have a little baggy that Kate's lunch had been in and so I put it in there.  I'm talking with my mom still and I'm really weirded out by this bug and just can't get over it.  I finally tell my mom I'm going to send her a picture of it.

I wait about 5 minutes before I'm calling her and asking her what she thinks it is.  Could it be lice?  So I have Norma come over and I'm looking all over her hair to see if she had anything like it.  That is when Mom says that it looks like a tick.

What!!!

I immediately google pictures of ticks.  Up comes this site with all the pictures of ticks and I see the one I have in the baggy from my baby's hair is a dog tick.  I yell for the kids to put the dog outside and my mom is asking if I had gotten the head out when I pulled it out of her hair.  I didn't know it was a tick! I thought it was a cookie crumb!  How am I suppose to know if I got the head out when I didn't even know it was a bug!

By now I'm really freaking out.  Nate had taken our durango and gone hunting again and was out of a service area with his phone.  I have no way to go anywhere and I'm really coming undone.

I look at her head and I see a chunk of skin missing but I can't tell if there is still a head in there or not.  The tick is still alive and moving and it is really freaking me out and looking at all these sites of tick bites and what can happen and all the diseases that tick carry and give to people and it is not helping my panic mode.

So I put on facebook if anyone is willing to come and look at it for me who would know what they are looking at.  I try and call a neighbor I know is a nurse and no answer.  I decided to call my doctors office hoping that it would still be open at least for the after hours part but it's almost 9 so I didn't think anyone would be there.

Someone was and I got through to a nurse.  Told her that I just found a tick in my babies hair and was really freaking out because I didn't know it was a tick when I took it out of her hair so I wasn't sure if I had gotten the head out and how could I be sure and what was I suppose to do because even if she told me to go the the ER for it, I couldn't because I didn't have a car.  (And yes, I said that all in one breath.)  She told me not to freak out but it was really hard to get the head out.  I was going to have to try and get out the head like you get out a sliver and I'm thinking, "Lady, she's an 18 month old baby, you think I can hold her still by myself and go at her head with a needle!"

It's not helping my frame of mind that she sounded really concerned about it and even said to me if it had been one of her kids, she would have been taking them to the ER.  She said that I needed to watch for a fever and if I didn't think that I had gotten the head out I need to bring her in first thing in the morning.

By now, I'm REALLY freaking out!  I don't know what to do and I'm trying to get the other kids to bed and it just is not working because I'm not calming down at all and so They aren't calming down at all.

I find a site that has a video of how to take out a tick.  It was really dumb and it was animated but when I watched it, I saw the head come out and I looked at the tick I had in the bag and I could see the same thing that was on the video that looked like the head.

About this time one of my good friends Kristine texts me and says that she just saw on facebook that I needed help with a tick and would I like her to come over and look for me.  I was so grateful!  She came right over and helped me feel so much better about knowing that I had gotten the head out and that Katy's head looked okay.  I told her that I was still a little weirded out that the tick wasn't dieing when I had tried to squish it and she used her metal tweezers and "POP".  It was super loud and you wouldn't believe how much blood came out of it but it was finally dead.

She went home and I felt good enough to put Kate to bed.  Poor girl just wanted to go to bed but I kept looking at her head and having other people look at it too.

Nate called a little after 10 and of course I got all worked up again telling him all about it.  I didn't even ask him how hunting went before we hung up.  (Don't worry, he didn't get anything.)

I've never been so freaked out in my life!  I'm still worried about what will come of the bite.  The sites I saw said that sometimes it takes up to a month for signs of infections to show.  I'll be keeping an eye on it and we still have the dead, squished bug if anything come of it.  All I can say is it was a long night and I may have a hard time going camping again.