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I have no idea what this means in the scheme of things, but Taylor Buchholz’s baseball career is on hold due to depression and anxiety.
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From Maja:
The letter writer doesn’t mention gastrointestinal symptoms so that rules out a bit. Lyme disease is not present in Peru (or most other countries in South America except for Brazil as far as I know) as the ticks are different – soft versus hard.
I’m assuming all the normal tests have been done to rule out things like malaria, as Richard mentioned, you could consider bringing up Mayaro virus or Western or Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (don’t let the name fool you, both affect people too). It might be worth it to go to a travel clinic with an ID specialist where they may be more familiar with stranger diseases. The peculiar thing about your disease is the seemingly long incubation period, making it seem like Lyme, but that is highly unlikely. Have they tested you for Lyme? Is it possible you contracted it before or after your trip?
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HAVE YOU SEEN THESE CRITTERS?
mosquito
flea
sand fly
ticks
Richard:
Didn’t see an email for you, so hopefully you’ll get this message. I was down at my lodge in the Peruvian Amazon this past November. At the time, I got chewed up viciously my chiggers. But in retrospect, I suspect it may have been more than just chiggers. Long story short, upon my return to the states, came down with virulent flu-like symptoms including chills which nearly had me in convulsions that hurt my muscles and than an hour later a fever that would drench my blankets. All the other flu-like suspects as well. Even though I had been visiting the jungle for nearly 14 years, I had never been this ill before. Eventually, the symptoms went away and I didn’t give it much more thought. Fast forward. In December, noticed a ringing in my ears. In February, my left arm began to ache and was unable to lift it. At the same a mysterious rash appeared one night on both the left and ride side of my ribs right beneath my arms. No itch or pain, but looked like flea bites. But nowhere else on my body and my wife didn’t have any bites. Seemed odd, but after a few weeks it disappeared. But then the pain in my left arm migrated into my right arm. Also, a slight numbness on the left side of my face. Went to my GP and he told me I had rotator cuff injury and I should see a physical therapist. Wait, I’m not stupid. Where in the medical journals do they talk about rotator cuff injuries traveling from one arm to the other? None-the-less, I’ve since moved onto a neurologist who had had many MRIs performed, blood tests and most recently a spinal tap. Based upon my research, I’m starting to hypothesize that maybe I got bit by a tick in addition to all those chiggers…but I haven’t been able to find much in online literature that indicates there are ticks in the Amazon jungle, and if so, if they would carry lyme disease or a distant cousin of that? I’m at my wit’s end and my symptoms are getting worse. Do you think there’s any merit to my way of thinking? Thanks, ________
Dear____,
Please tell me that your doctor checked for malaria. Any traveler with a fever who is returning from an area known to have malaria needs to be tested. Were you tested for any other diseases? Were you on an anti-malarial? If you had been on a quinine derivative for the malaria, that could be the cause of ringing in the ears.
As far as I can tell, Lyme doesn’t really exist in South America.
Posted in Tropical Disease, Uncategorized, Veterinary Medicine
Tagged Amazon, insects, ticks, tropical disease
The first reader to identify the picture in the previous post win’s a XL t-shirt from the now-defunct petadvocate.org website.
Yee ha.
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Check out this link, and you will see why this is my favorite place to buy books.
Join the Co-op, and buy from them.
A dissected book by Brian Dettmer
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My favorite bookstore. It’s located in Hyde Park, Chicago.
Some of the posts I want to write don’t really belong in a public health blog, so the editorial team has created The Meta-Bug, which claims to be:
We’ll see.
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Reader SM writes:
Hi I am happy to have found this post. I was bitten by what looked like an assassin bug in 2003. It was an experience that I will never forget. I was walking across a lawn at Fresno State University in Southern California when this bug leaped out of the grass and onto my leg. It had very strong muscles in its legs because I couldn’t shake it off. I had to pluck it off and it took some effort on my part. It had a similar coloration on its edges to a bee. My leg soon began to swell to an incredible degree I am a fairly slim woman and if you had looked at that leg alone you would honestly think I weighed 300 lbs at least. I fell asleep under a tree from exhausted after this happened and I think I recall that it was painful as well. The swelling did go down and by the time I went to the doctor there was little more than a little scar where the insect had bit me. My doctor wouldn’t test for Chagas and told me I was fine. This upset me but I just accepted what he said and went on with life.
I do have many health problems, pre-dominantly headaches, migraines, pain in my joints and back, lethargy/fatigue, intolerance to heat, depression, anxiety, acid reflux, allergies and sinus problems, and incontinence. As well as a whole host of skin rashes including a red rash on my face that looks like lupus but has been diagnosed as rosacea so far.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
We will be getting some opinions and responding soon. However, unless you’ve been in Latin America, it is nearly inconceivable that you have Chagas’ disease.
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Richard Lerner is the author of this blog. All complaints should be sent to anyone other than him. We are looking for other writers interested in vector-borne disease, or timely information on the fight against these conditions, especially in the Americas.
