Family gets rude tick awakening

Blood-sucking insect becoming more prelavent on P.E.I.

FRENCH RIVER — On the night of April 29 Monica Jollimore's seven-year-old daughter, Makayla, came to her and said she had an itchy bump on her head.

Jollimore moved her daughter's hair and was shocked at what she saw, a medium-sized black-legged tick had latched onto her daughter's scalp.

“I couldn’t get over it, to look at your kid's head and move their hair and to have a tick there after being outside for just 45 minutes the night before,” said Jollimore.

“It was an eye-opener, we definitely have ticks here now,” she added.

Despite living in French River for 16 years, spending lots of time outside and having two cats and a dog, this was a first for Jollimore.

“I've never seen a tick before, I don’t even know where they would nest at or where to look for them.”

Though Jollimore and many islanders have never seen a tick, researchers say that could start changing.

Dr. Vett Lloyd is a professor of biology at Mount Allison University, she studies zoonotic diseases, which are diseases that jump from animals to people, she also operates the Llyod Tick Laboratory.

Lloyd became interested in ticks and Lyme disease after being bitten, developing symptoms and realizing few people knew of the dangers or prevalence of ticks and the disease they often carry.

Now, at the Lloyd tick laboratory ticks are sent to her and tested for Lyme and other pathogens, as well as documented to show where ticks are active.

In that research, Lloyd has begun to see more and more ticks coming from P.E.I.

“I think P.E.I. is in the same situation that New Brunswick was in ten years ago, the tick population is increasing dramatically, there has always been a few ticks that would hitchhike on birds.”

“The concern is whether they are making a home on P.E.I. and the increasing number of ticks we are getting from P.E.I. suggest that may be happening,” Lloyd said.

As a result, more families could face the same anxieties as the Jollimore's.

The shocked Jollimore family was left unsure what to do and took seven-year-old Makayla into the Emergency Department at Prince County Hospital.

“They took her right in, they didn’t leave her waiting and within an hour we had the tick out and were on our way home,” Jollimore said of the quality of treatment her daughter received.

But once the tick was removed more questions started to arise.

At first, Jollimore said it wasn’t clear that the tick was going to be tested for Lyme disease even though it was a black-legged tick, the only species that carries Lyme.

When the test on the tick came back inconclusive for Lyme disease the Jollimore's were given more anxiety instead of closure.

“Because it came back inconclusive, I sit here every day wondering if symptoms are going to show up in a month's time or should I take her to get tested in six months?”

Jollimore said that because she, like many islanders, didn’t know ticks were on P.E.I. she has felt very unprepared in dealing with the bite and potential after-effects.

In response to tick bites, the P.E.I. government has started working with eTick, an online identification service created by Dr. Jade Savage, who has taught medical entomology at Bishop’s University for 15 years.

The website and mobile app allow people to upload pictures of ticks they have encountered and identifies them within 48 hours.

“Why not use technology to make sure that people can get an identification answer rapidly that will allow them to make a decision on what to do after a tick bite,” Savage said.

If a tick is identified as a black-legged tick, Savage said, the person is given instructions based on guidelines given to eTick from individual provincial public health departments, such as where to take the tick for testing and what symptoms to look out for.

Though it is important to test black-legged ticks, Savage said, testing ticks is only half the battle against Lyme disease.

“Symptoms and patient history are a lot more important than knowing if the tick that you think bit you was infected or not, you could have been bitten more than once.”

Jollimore thinks it's good the province is now using services like eTick, but she has been left with even more questions and anxiety after her daughter came home from school with a headache and nausea.

“You sit there wondering, there was no flu, she wasn’t sick, nothing before or after it, so It makes you wonder was the headache the result of that tick bite,” Jollimore said.

Since 2012 P.E.I has had just one case of non-travel related Lyme disease, but Jollimore is taking no chances and plans to seek further testing for her daughter.

“I couldn’t get over it, to look at your kid’s head and move their hair and to have a tick there after being outside for just 45 minutes the night before,” Monica Jollimore