Already 2 cases of lyme at my child's school!

We've already had two students at my child's school be diagnosed just this year with lyme after a tick bite and rash. Our school only has a population of about 400. Doesn't that seem like a lot? And those are just the cases where a rash developed, so it was noticed by the parents. One child got the tick bite while camping about 10 miles from our town, the other doesn't know where it came from.

We're on the central coast of California. It's super frustrating because I've been told by many doctors here that lyme is just an "east coast thing". Our community is not educated on lyme at all- I actually knew nothing about it until a friend suggested getting tested when she heard all my symptoms. Not one of my doctors even considered it.

One the girls with lyme had the rash, but her mom had no clue what it meant. She brought her daughter to the school nurse who told her to get tested for lyme ASAP. Thank goodness our nurse knows about it! :)

JSlag -
Sorry to hear this news. I think you're right to be alarmed, although it's only the beginning. On the other hand, as Chapelle stated it is really great that they got diagnosed. And, knowing what we all know about how difficult it is to get diagnosed, you should be wondering how many kids are not yet diagnosed.

There was a great article about a study done on birds in CA. Ticks carrying the bacterium responsible for Lyme disease are infesting Northern California's birds - here's the study:
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118146

And here's an LA Times article on the study - worth a read:
www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-california-birds-lyme-disease-20150225-story.html

-p

Yes - I am in San Diego.

Wow- I didn't hear about the El Nino effect. I'm going to go read about it.

Thanks for the articles Pirouette! We had all these bird feeders in our yard last year, but after I got diagnosed with lyme I removed them all. Made me sad, but not worth inviting anything into our yard.

I still feed my hummers..... so sad that the birds are carriers.

I just cringe when I hear of children getting lyme. What a horrible thing for a child to have to go through..