I have had more friends freak out and come
to me because their kids had ticks on them
with this trip. I am protesting it at the
parents' meeting about it, but otherwise,
I told my daughter I just can't let her go.
I have been ill for 4 years with seizures
and mcs, and there is no way my heart could
take it to watch one of my kids get this.

I promised her I would let her go on a vacation that week, and I understand she is
mad at me, understand why...(all her friends
are going)...but I am standing firm.

More and more folks in my little town are
getting sick...I would literally break down
to watch my child go through anything that
I have gone through and continue to go through.

coat her with avon skin so soft for ticks, wear light clothes, long pants and check her really good when she gets home and let her go...my son just went on a similiar trip....

can't stop them from being kids and doing all that outdoor stuff..heck I live right on a pond and my son is always knee deep into everything here...

I just cover him good, and double check him every night...best I can do without making him paranoid of life....

just my opinion..I"m scrared too...

He freaks out when the kids are in grassy areas he dont want the kids out when it starts getting dark because of mosqitoes.

Its hard I know but the kids could grow up with some kind of paranoia...

If we live out life in fear its better off not to live.. We would all be like What about Bob....Did you see that movie?

Seeing that one of my art student's brothers
contracted it a few months ago (May), I
just can't embark on this. I have let her
go on Girl Scout outings, but this trip
keeps allowing kids to get bit. Another one
of my art students who went on the trip, said
everyone "was covered in ticks" last year,
where the other kid contracted lyme.

I do live in fear as I have an advanced case
of lyme, and two in the family will be too
much. The rest of my family have suffered
from me being ill, emotionally, financially,
...we are drained.

My husband is siding with me, as he has seen
me too sick for too long to disagree. I
can't help myself. My daughter has been
allowed to go to DARE community center, other
events, but not this one. I can't back down
on this...too risky, and in fact, I think
the class trip should be changed.

One day the school is going to find itself
sued for a kid getting really ill.

I really don't think you're looking to be talked out of it...you need to go with what feels right for you and your kids...your gut...it's always worked for you.

that's what I do everyday too...sometimes it's just different for each of us.

She has been ill for over 6 years and was misdiagnosed for most of them. She has lyme and bartonella and all it's horrible psychiatric problems..She has no friends, is 17 and has never had a date or gone to a dance..Has never gotten her license..Does not have any type of normal life.

She has attempted suicide 4 times and planned a 5th. Been in 3 psychiatric facilities.She also has obsessive compulsive disorder..She does self mutilation. I have seen things that no mother should ever see..If you can prevent it then do whatever you need to do..Put her in a straight jacket..

i live right on a pond in the woods, adn between having my yard sprayed by the local university, who's big into lyme research here in RI , and the avon skin so soft for bugs and ticks, my kids nor I have had one tick this year, and have remained relapse free..

I always get the blue kind that covers blue then disappears so we can see what we cover with the skin so soft...it really does seem to work well...my son is a magnet for ticks and mosquitos..and our area is loaded..

Univ. of RI scoops our area for ticks and in 10 minutes found over 5000 ticks about a mile from our house...adn guess what ? over 65% tested positive for bart! I gave all these stats to Dr. H also....RI is such a hot bed for bart...

anyway, good for you for standing by your convictions di....gotta do what feels right for you !

only in the woods

It took me the first year after diagnosis to slowly start to limit our outdoor contact. We live in an area in northern CA where there are ticks out our back door.

I told my boys, who were 7 yrs and 10 yrs old at the time of diagnosis, that the reason we have Lyme, is because we (me especially) were such outdoors type people. Not just your casual hiker/camper.

I was your total outdoor girl. I had 2 german shepherd dogs, and we hiked everywhere, camped everywhere. I moved up to No. CA from L.A. because I fell in love with the beauty of this place. Open space parks to hike, bike, camp everywhere you looked. In l998, we moved to our dream house, on an acre, near open space, where there are deer in our backyard. Very untypical type neighborhood, amongst tract house type neighborhoods.

Anyway, I went thru this with both boys. They attend private schools where there are outdoor field trips to everywhere around here, and slowly, I started to tell them they could not go. At first, it was no big deal, I just made it a fun play day at home, then it became more and more where they were being asked/teased about not going on these trips by kids at school.

In spring 2001, my sons 8th grade teacher blabbed to the whole class that my son was NOT GOING ON THE OUTDOOR EDUCATION TRIP BECAUSE HE HAS LYME. I freaked out, and called this idiot teacher at home and reemed her out for spewing confidential medical information to the whole class. oF course my son was mortified, and it set the tone for the rest of his jr. high years at this school.

Now, he's in high school, they go on a retreat type trip to the Santa Cruz mountains every fall, and it is tick country there. Highly endemic. I will not let him go, and we still have not been in agreement on this, because he feels left out, and there is one kid in particular who makes my son feel horrible because he won't/can't go on this trip.

I wish it were easy to get my kids to ignore the peer pressure of the group of kids that jeer and ridicule them for not going, but that is maybe in another lifetime, not this one. I hate it hate it hate it, but I told both my boys just recently that I simply will not live another single minute wondering if I am putting their health at risk by allowing them to attend one of these stupid school trips. I cannot handle it.

The possibility of another tick bite would kill me. My spirit would die. Maybe my body wouldn't, but until/unless YOU ARE A MOTHER OF A CHILD WITH LYME, you will not be able to relate to this at all.

Oh, and by the way, my husband is NOT in agreement with me on this. Just this past Friday, I lied to him about where my youngest son was. I told my husband he was at school, but in fact, he was with me all day because his class was taking a river raft trip on the American River thru Sacramento, and I personally went on this trip when my oldest son went on it a few years ago, and I know for a fact that the shores of this river have ticks on them.

I told my youngest son on Friday, who persisted in pestering me to the very last minute (that very morning of the trip) that he WILL NOT GO on any field trips that his school takes that go into tick country.

There is no arguing with me anymore on this. I am completely completely beyond wishy washy in my decision making on this issue. I will not bend. My husband can divorce me, I will probably be looking at giving up my children, but I simply will not cave.

I'm dead tired of the people who do not get this. If they want to say "oh, there are ticks everywhere, what are you gonna do live in a bubble?" I say, whelp, I'm not living in the tall grass walking thru the forest letting the questing ticks rub up on my pants and find their way to my bellybutton, that's for damn sure". No bubbles, please, but no more outdoor nature girl for me. And until my boys are 18, out of the house, and paying for their own medical insurance, they better make damn sure they're not wandering thru the woods while they live under my roof.

Because if I find that they do, I'm outta here.

They know I mean this.

I've had it.

Until there's a cure . . . (and we all know there won't be one).

I'm with you Di.

[This message has been edited by Just Julie (edited 21 September 2004).]

The 2nd thing that I have always done, is if there is any "work" that the teacher assigns because my son(s) are not attending the "outdoor education" (what a joke) trip, I DO THE ASSIGNED ASSIGNMENT for them. I do not tell the teacher (shushhh!) that I am doing it, but I tell my child that it is "my" fault they are not going on this school trip, so I will do the work, not them.

I feel it is my responsibility as their mother to make this decision for them, because after all, that is what mothers are for, right? And I will take the punishment for them because it is not up to them that they are not going on the trip.

The rationale behind this is that I do not feel it is right for the teacher to assign anything for my child to do because due to a medical condition, he is missing this trip.

If the trip were scheduled anywhere but outside in an endemic area for ticks, then my son would certainly attend the outdoor education trip. But this is so unlikely to happen. I can't see the schools switching these field trips to have the kids learn about nature in some hotel somewhere, right? It's always a mountain cabin in the woods or woods near the ocean type thing. The damn ticks backyards for god's sake.

So, seeings how the field trip will never be in a "safe" place for my son to go wandering around in, I take the hit for them. They do some learning, but it is not the type the teacher is thinking they're doing.

They're learning about life, and how damn hard it is, when you can't do something that you want to do, and you know you're gonna get teased and made fun of because of your situation. I hurt, I get so hurt, when my boys feel left out of a peer situation, but I have learned some rough stuff too, these past 4 yrs. I've learned how cruel grownup teachers can be, and how calloused they can become when you try to engage them for some help for your child.

I have one jr. high teacher in particular that I'd like to smack between her eyes for her judgmental and snarky attitude towards me and my son. This is my 2nd round with her, she taught my oldest son for 2 yrs in jr. high, and now she's getting my youngest son. Who's got Lyme. And who will not be going on any outside field trips that go into tick country.

I learned that I need to say very little to this woman, and to the other teachers as well. I spoke up for my first son, and the 3 teachers seemed interested, but in the end, I learned that they were just pacifiying me, and the one lead teacher even told me I was being "overly sensitive" about my son's Lyme and his condition after I confronted her when she blabbed her mouth to her class about my son not attending their precious outdoor education week long trip.

Well, not anymore. They get no more education out of me, and they certainly won't be told the why's or wherefor's of my decisions of whether my youngest son goes on any field trips.

In fact, I think I'll use the blanket "we're going out of town at that time" excuse and let them all wonder.

quote:

---

Originally posted by ArtistDi:
Lis,

I don't agree with ticks not being near the
ocean. One of my best friends lives in
Truro, Cape Cod, and he says there are plenty
of ticks in grasses near the ocean. He does
tick checks all the time.

---

Well, our last summer being "outdoors people" before seeing our LLMD that following September, I took my boys to a camping destination called www.Costanoa.com It was a newish luxury camp type thing, where you could either bring your own tent, rent one of their luxury tent cabins, stay in a 2 family "cabin", or stay in the lodge.

This place was breathtaking, a direct walk acros hwy 1 on the coast of California. I had no idea that we might encounter ticks of any kind. You walk thru paths with tall rush grasses on both sides of the trail. At this point in the summer, my symptoms were ramping up, but I honestly didn't know if I had Lyme yet. Both my boys had had Lyme symptoms come and go for the past 4 yrs.

So, we're at Costanoa, directly across the street from the pacific ocean, and I find ticks crawling on the walls of our cabin, we go mountain bike riding in Big Basin National Park, down a W-I-D-E bike path, find a tick crawling in my hair, and one crawling down the back of my youngest sons shirt. and the kicker is, that night, as we were getting ready for bed, my youngest son Sean, says "mom isn't that black dot thing behind Kevin's ear, a tick?" I freak out at 10p.m. at night, and we go running over to the management building, and he yanks it out w/ tweezers and drops it on the floor! I try so hard to calm down, but the manager guy says, well, there it goes! I ask if there are ticks here???!!!!!!!!!!!!! and he says yes there is.

This is an ocean camp. He also said that most people who find ticks there, or on them, go home. I would've been out thousands of dollars at that point, if we'd just bailed, so I stayed.

Dumb mom.

That summer, the one of 2000, was one where I took my boys on many trips, just the 3 of us. Every single place I took us (Inverness, Point Reyes Station, beaches along the coast up there) had ticks everywhere. Breathtaking beauty, to say the least.

That was our last summer with blinders on.

I camp no more. And will never hike in the tall grasses again in this most beautious of land to live on. Northern California - paradise lost. And I am so sad. My heart is broken.

Unrepairable nature girl.

[This message has been edited by Just Julie (edited 22 September 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Just Julie (edited 22 September 2004).]

At the parents meeting, hand out tick identification cards available through the lyme disease association.

Take a copy of the new Guidelines to each teacher of the school.

Educate anyone involved with planning, and development of this natures classroom on tick borne illness and the consequenses.

There is enough published literature now, including the new ILADS guidelines, that dispell some of the rumors (like the rash). to which parents have more tools to fight with (hey now its published...now its a legal issue if they dont treat).

Now, I wont disagree with you because you are the mom.....

but in my opinion, if it were my daughter...I would let her go. Give her tools to watch for any potential infection.

You cant protect her. Even when Lishka was little and in heart failure, the doctor told us to not go anywhere or do anything because it could kill her....so, she wanted to go to disneyland....and Texas.....

quote:

---

Originally posted by lla2:
di,

coat her with avon skin so soft for ticks, wear light clothes, long pants and check her really good when she gets home and let her go...

---

Lisa, the latest issue of the Lyme Times says Avon Skin So Soft is not effective.

quote:

---

Avon makes Skin-So-Soft Bug Guard Plus IR3535, but tests by Consumer's Union and a group from the Mass General Hospital (published in the New England Journal of Medicine) showed this product not to be at all useful in repelling insects. Deet was reported to be the best repellent.

---

From the Lyme Times
Summer 2004
pg. 7

------------------
Sonoma County Lyme Support
California
[email protected]

How dare that one teacher stand up and annouce it to the classroom!!!!

I have not really sat down with the 2nd grade teacher yet this year and told her what is going on. She knows that she stops off in the nurses office every morning for her concerta already.

I am about to add some more pills and more stops to the nurses office. Yuck! But I must do it anyway. No choice.

I"m very happy with it...

it's a shame they're bad mouthing it...i've recommended it to friends as well adn they've been very happy with it as well..no bites etcc..

sometimes you can't believe what you read...trust what works for you!

Lisa