By: Damien Sanchez
Well, it has been a while since my last post, I hope everyone enjoyed the article By Jura Koncius of the Washington post, we were certainly excited to have had the opportunity to be interviewed. I would like to thank Holly Hartel and her family for graciously making time for the interview, Holly and the girls did a great job and if you missed the article click on the link above!
We had a great year for 2009, Jennifer, my office manager came on in June and is hard at work everyday. It’s amazing how much time a business can consume, but she does a great job and I am blessed to have her on board! She will be starting to contribute posts hopefully this week, so I hope you all enjoy them! Mosquito Squad as a Franchise had a banner year for 2009. OLB sold 20 new franchises, 4 of them in the capital region, so for those of you near Fredricksburg, Annapolis, or Fredrick and East Montgomery County, you will now have a local franchise to better serve you.
This year was a great year, I had the oportunity to meet so many new customers and vendors. We were blessed with the opportunity to donate to the Junior League of Washington’s annual fundraiser. Great organization, I would encourage anyone interested in volunteering to do so; teaching literacy is very important check out the link above and get involved. Well that is the short and sweet year in review.
Now on to the purpose of this post, earlier this year I intended to write a post about my “brush with death” (OK, this is some what of an exaggeration, but I was really really sick) on the W&OD trail. On a Friday evening I was out on the trail when I passed through some tall grass on my way home.
As I passed through the tall grass I did think about ticks, especially since I am in the tick control business. I did my typical quick tick check and showered once I was home. Saturday I felt fine all day; I did my typical morning routine and we had a fun day hanging out with the family and going to Costco. Sunday morning, however, I woke up with an itchy and scratchy throat. When I went to shower I noticed a small black pimple on my waist (0r what I thought was a pimple) I started to scratch at it and I pulled it a little and noticed this tiny pimple was flat and black. Then I realized it was a tick!
I proceeded to remove the tick, see my post on protecting yourself from tick bites, using my fingers (I didn’t read my own post, you should always use tweezers so you can reach as close to the base of the head as possible) and pulled the tick out. Thankfully I made sure I had gotten the head out . I then placed it in a zip lock bag, sealed it, put it in a second zip lock bag and then placed it in the freezer. I saved the tick because I wanted to send it off to a lab for examination.
I didn’t have a bullseye rash yet but I did monitor it for several days. Through out Sunday my condition worsened, I thought for sure I had Lyme disease! I scheduled an appointment with my doctor and looked for information on where I could send the tick for testing.
With a little research online I found a company called Clongen Labratories located in Germantown MD, I contacted them and for under $200 I sent my tick in and they tested it for 4 common bacteria that ticks carry, including Lyme. I received results in less than a week. Thankfully the results came back negative, but as a precaution I had gotten a prescription for some strong antibiotics in case the results came back positive, needless to say I didn’t need to take them. So it turns out all I had was a bad case of the flu for about a week.
I wanted to share this story because I have a long historyof dealing with ticks (see my post on Lyme Disease). Having dealt with ticks for some time, I am more aware than most of the potential for infection by a tick bite. I routinely do a self check for ticks after I have been to untreated properties or out on the W&OD trail, but even I missed a tick after 2 showers, 48 hours and an inspection. This tick was on my bare skin too along my waistband and I still didn’t catch it for 2 days. These ticks are incredibly smalland easy to miss. Thankfully I didn’t get it this time, but I will be checking a lot better now, so should you.
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