Thread: Lyme disease in Australia?

There is MUCH evidence hat Lyme disease can and does occur in Oz.

Oz Autopsy - Lyme Riddled Heart,
Lungs, Liver, Kidneys
From Patricia Doyle, PhD
9-21-10

Originally Posted by saczel

The experts say it can't happen here. Has anyone else had a tick bite go dodgy?

Define dodgy.

My Doc was non committal - sighting reports but no proof. I had a tick shortly after returning from Europe and was concerned. Pretty much discounted Lyme because no expanding ring ever eventuated, but the bite took a good month to go away.

I always thought i had it but try telling a doctor that and see what happens. I was hoping to hear from people who might have also gone through the medical merry go round. It's like the people that had Ross River before they decided mozzies where the cause after all and they where not all nuts.

What are your symptoms?

Had a work colleague with Qld tick typhus. Numerous tests before it was identified.

Royal North Shore hospital in Sydney has a specialist field in tick diseases.

In the US, it's mainly whitetail deer that carry the tick that spreads Lyme disease.

In Oz - it can't be here in Oz coz we don't have whitetail deer introduced here, that could have brought the ticks with them.



Oops.

Blame me...

Whitetail deer on my deer farm....

What would doctors know?

Just send to the US for the antibiotics, if it goes away, then you had it!

The symptoms are basically a stiff sore neck which is at the bite site. I didn't get the bullseye pattern or rash but had muscle spasms and no control of the muscles after that. It finished up fusing together in places so have nerves being crushed and lack of some muscle control so i get all twitchy and look like i have parkinsons. No fun at all. A few dodgy chiros really made a mess of it so now it is totally stuffed with scans showing the fusing is starting to expand further down my spine, non stop headaches that last for weeks when the right nerve gets hit. If it's not Lyme's it's own version of it. Definatly watch out for them ticks near your spine, any damage there can be permanent.

The Australian health authorities have there head in the sand over the exsistance of Lymes disease in Australia. They claim that all reported cases are where the person has been overseas and must have contracted the disease there.
There have been a few cases where Australians who have never even left the country have Lymes including a young female park ranger who has documented evidence of being bitten by ticks on more than one occasion while working in Australian national parks and who has never been overseas but has been diagnosed as having Lymes disease.
The health authorities are refusing to accept its exsistance and repeatedly state that there is no evidence that it is here which is total BS. The evidence is there they just dont want to deal with it.

I totally agree. I have never been OS also and have read similar reports. It maybe some sort of allergic reaction because when i got a bite and found the tick i also found a few where it tried to borrow in and changed it's mind and those initial little bites would swell up to marble size over a few hours. The one i got on my neck where it borrowed in almost all the way swelled up to small hens egg size and was weeping clear stuff for days. I used to think i was bullet proof in those days so it was months before i saw a doctor and it was too late to do anything about it, it just kept getting worse. Apparently any tests only work in the first few weeks when your body is trying to make antibodies to fight it off and then there is no evidence left. That was told to me by a doctor of infectious diseases who didn't believe me and thought i was a drugo and tested for needle diseases instead. He said he tested for Lyme's but from what i can tell there is no Lyme disease test in Australia. If you mention you looked it up on the web they laugh in your face and tell you not to worry, it will all go away, which it didn't. It is some sort of bacterial infection that stuffs up your immune system and starts some other process. I got more sympathy from vets than i did from any specialist i could find. There needs to be more research instead of the current situation. 15 years and i am no closer to the answer. If you go through scrubby bush always wear bushmans or some other toxic repellant.

They could do tests here but they wont because their head is buried in the sand and they would also have to admit that is here and more wide spread that they are admitting to. The tests can be done in the USA but its expensive.

It depends on what the current test reliability is. Most of the old tests are considered too iffy by todays standards thats why they(general practitioners) never got onboard. For every expert who says it exists there is another who says our native ticks cannot have it and thats their main argument, they are not the same(latin name). Maybe we have our own untested version but i think the time frame to prove it is small and then it can be said almost anything caused it. Maybe what i got is the end result of several things but it all started to turn to ##### after the tick bite and spread from the bite site in a few weeks so it kind of proves it to me, but with the little knowledge we have now who can say? Surely there are more tick stories out there?

I did a long stint of 13 yrs in the Army Reserves, and for about a year we had to have all our tick bites and ticks removed by the medical staff and a record was kept...I understand something to do with a record for Lyme disease into the future. My worst one was waking up in Bindoon and not being able to open one eye. He had dug in under my bottom eyelash. that one was a bit scary until the swelling went down.
My best haul after a w/e was 9, and now if I have a tick on me there are two old bites on my beltline that itch. That's how I know I have one...
My wife has still not forgiven me for bringing some home after a w/e and one deciding my very young fellas old fella was a great place to plug in to get a feed. After that I had to get undressed outside.
FYI stay away from the blackboys, they love to sit and wait for a passing kangaroo, but they're not real fussy.

I can remember back a few years when a dry spell was making fruit bats hang out near ground level because there was no food up higher and that year there was lots of reports about sick bats. There was some article about the ticks nailing them and wiping a lot out. The ticks normally feed on the usual animals and they have a resistance that builds up and it's all part of the natural cycle for the bacteria but when it get inside us it freaks out our bodies and does things it normally wouldn't. I used to go bushwalking and some years there was hardly any and others heaps, i was reading a map one day and the wind was blowing them out of the trees and they where coming down on the map like it was raining. I didn't always put on bushman's after i saw how it melted the plastic door trim of my car where my leg touched it but it kept the ticks away.

Tropical strength Bushman is de debbil... it will do everything from melt your steering wheel, seats and dashboard, to remove graffitti, get you 75 MPG if you add it to the fuel tank and launch rockets to the moon if you ignite it!

The fact you will have deformed kids if you apply it to your body is just a side effect tho if your up a tropical creek and the sand flies are biting - you'd happily bath in it!.

There's apparently no truth in the rumor it increases the alcohol content of spirits 7 times... by just adding a drop to your drinks.

Another Ozzie "can do / take no prisoners" product that actually works!.

Apparently they add it to the drinking water in Tassie, in place of flouride.

I heard tell the albino kid on the bridge with the Banjo in the movie "Deliverance" was the product of a bushman overdose parent.

But the ticks will leave you alone at least!

But getting back on track, anyone else had problems from tick bites? Anyone who regularly goes through scrubby bush gotten or heard of Lyme's or similar especially around south east queensland ?