The 3-year-old Oregon girl whose tick bite resulted in temporary paralysis earlier this month wasn’t affected by Lyme disease, the most common tickborne illness. A video of young Amanda Lewis having trouble standing was viewed nearly 20 million times on Facebook. The day after the video was taken a doctor found and removed a tick from Amanda’s head and she recovered. The tick the doctor removed was a dog tick, not the deer tick that carries Lyme disease.
But though Lyme disease is the most well-known, there are many tickborne illnesses that produce, according to the CDC, “symptoms include headache, fatigue, and muscle aches. With Lyme disease you may also experience joint pain” and also fever and other symptoms. According to the informative Facebook post, “tick paralysis results from injection of a toxin from tick salivary glands during a blood meal.”
