By Ellen Zunon
GUILDERLAND — It started out like any other summer evening; after dinner I did my usual hour of gardening, trying to clean the weeds out of one of the flower beds that had been sadly neglected during the last few weeks of rain and sun. Was it that night or the next that I woke up with chills and fever, and muscular aches that made me think I had the flu or a staph infection"

Another 24 hours later, I woke again at 3 a.m., with chills, aches, a fever of close to 102 degrees, and a slowly-growing circular red patch on my left foot. These are, in case you haven’t already guessed, the classic symptoms of Lyme disease.
Lyme disease, you say" Not me.

Not me, who survived 17 years of life in tropical Africa with nary a hint of malaria, yellow fever, or dengue fever. Not me, who hiked the rattle-snake-infested wilds of the Tongue Mountain range near Lake George, and brought home a rattler skin to prove it.

Not me, I thought, to be laid so low by a tiny bug in my own backyard, right here in the suburbs. But somewhere in between the holly and the hardy hibiscus in my perennial bed lurked a nasty little beast that attached itself to my foot long enough to infect me with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, which is the cause of Lyme disease.

You may have heard that deer ticks carry Lyme disease, and this is true. But that’s not the whole story.

Actually, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the Lyme disease bacterium normally lives in the bodies of mice, squirrels, and other small animals. It is transmitted to humans when a tick feeds on an infected animal and then feeds on a human.

So it is not just the deer that eat your shrubbery that help spread the disease, it is also the squirrels that you may toss peanuts to, and the field mice that your cat may catch. Deer do not become infected with the disease, but they are important in trans-porting ticks and maintaining tick populations.

Most cases of Lyme disease can be cured with antibiotics, usually doxycicline or amoxicillin. However, since only 60 to 80 percent of people who have been exposed to Lyme disease develop the characteristic bull’s-eye rash, Lyme disease is often missed or misdiagnosed.

If you develop the other flu-like symptoms — fever, chills, aches, swollen glands — and think you may have been exposed to Lyme disease, even if you don’t have the circular rash, be sure to tell your doctor. He or she may order a blood test to be sure of a diagnosis of Lyme disease.

However, you need to be aware of this: If your exposure was too recent to allow your immune system to produce antibodies to the Lyme disease bacterium, the test may produce a negative result. This is another reason the disease is often missed or misdiagnosed.

In my case, I was actually lucky to notice the red circle beginning to show on my foot, because that’s the real telltale sign of Lyme disease. I never even saw or felt the tick that bit me.

If I hadn’t had the bull’s-eye rash, my doctor might have tested me for any number of other infections, and thus lost time in prescribing the proper treatment.

That would have been very dangerous, because, if left untreated, Lyme disease can have severe and long-term neurological effects. According to the website of the New York State Health Department, these later effects can include severe fatigue, headaches, tingling or numbness in the arms or legs, swelling of the joints, and heart and central nervous-system problems. These problems may not appear until weeks, months, or even years after the initial infection, so it may be difficult to connect them with Lyme disease.

Avoiding ticks
So much for diagnosis and treatment. What about that ounce of prevention I should have used in the first place" Preventive measures I looked into fell into three categories: avoiding ticks, removing ticks, and controlling ticks. In case you haven’t guessed, the key word here is ticks.

I had already been aware of the need to wear long pants, use insect repellent, and stick to the middle of the trail when hiking in tick-infested areas, but honestly — I can’t wear a full-body biohazard suit every time I step out my back door to pull a few weeds. So here are the measures I have decided to use when gardening or doing yard work on my own premises:

— I wear long sleeves, long pants, and socks and sneakers when mowing or gardening. No more weeding in flip-flops! I tuck my pant legs into my socks, especially when stepping into the flower beds to trim or gather plant debris.

— I use insect repellent with Deet on exposed skin (but not near my eyes or mouth, of course). The brand I found at Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) is Ben’s Wilderness Formula and it contains 30 percent Deet. The label claims it will repel ticks and deer flies as well as mosquitoes.

A friend of mine recommended a plant-based repellent with oil of lemon eucalyptus in case I was worried about side effects of Deet, but I decided to go with Ben’s Wilderness Formula after having already been bitten by a tick once. In my case, I felt that the risk of side effects was the lesser of two evils as compared to being re-infected with Lyme disease.

And, by the way, you don’t develop an immunity after having had the disease; it is possible to get it again. Whatever type of repellent you decide to use, be sure to read the directions carefully and, especially, keep it out of the reach of your children.

— I also purchased a product called Permanone at EMS. This is a repellent that you spray on your clothes, not on your skin. It contains the active ingredient Permethrin, which apparently not only repels ticks, but also kills them. I plan to treat my pant legs and long sleeves before the leaf-raking season starts.

According to the label instructions, one treatment holds up through several machine washings. Again, if you decide to use such a product, read the label and follow the directions carefully.

Removing ticks
Even while using all these precautions, I have learned the hard way that I need to check my clothing and skin for ticks when I come in from working outside. But how do you know what to look for"

A tick is not an insect; it has eight legs, not six, but it is not a spider either. It is more closely related to a dust mite. (Another annoying little pest!)

In the spring and early summer, it is the tick nymphs that are active and that are most likely to infect people. The nymphs are the size of poppy seeds, so they are easier to spot if you wear light-colored clothing. In the late summer and fall, ticks have progressed to the adult phase of their life cycle; the adults are about the size of sesame seeds, and they can still be dangerous.
The New York State Department of Health recommends checking yourself all over for ticks every evening if you are outside regularly in areas where ticks are likely to be found. In my case, that means my own yard.
And what should you do if you do find a tick attached to your skin" I inquired at EMS about tick-removal kits that I had heard about, but none were available that day. I presume the kit consists of pointed tweezers and disinfectant.
The health department has this advice about removing ticks: "Using tweezers, grasp tick near the mouth parts, as close to the skin as possible. Pull tick in a steady, upward motion away from skin." And then, as common sense would already tell you, disinfect your skin with soap, water, and rubbing alcohol.

I hope I’m not too squeamish to follow these instructions if I do find a tick on myself or on a family member!

Controlling ticks

The third type of preventive measure I had mentioned deals with controlling or discouraging ticks on your premises. In my case, an expensive automatic misting system that sprays bug repellent periodically into every corner of my yard, or an eight-foot deer fence are not options.
So what can I do to reduce the chance of ticks making my yard their home" First of all, ticks thrive in shady moist areas at ground level. They like our lawns and gardens, especially on the edge of wooded areas.

They do not jump or fly — they get on you only by direct contact. So it stands to reason that, if I mow and trim regularly so that there is less long grass and brush around, there may be fewer ticks.

This fall I will also make sure to clear away leaves and tall grass around my house, and trim and dispose of the remains of my perennial beds. Next spring, when I plant my garden, I will try to create a barrier between my lawn and my wooded area by placing a swath of wood chips or crushed stones between the lawn and the trees.

You can find other landscaping tips and a Tick Management Handbook developed by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station free of charge on line — remember Lyme, Conn. was the Ground Zero of Lyme disease, so these folks have done a lot of research.

As deer are the other part of the deer tick equation, I also tried to find out what else I could possibly do to cut down on deer using my yard as a thorough-fare. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation estimates that there are about a million deer in New York, and I know that their main highway goes straight through my property.

I see their valentine cookie-cutter footprints in the snow in winter, and occasionally meet them eye to eye at dusk in any other season — those glowing fireball eyes reflect off my headlights eerily when I pull into my driveway just after dusk.

I called a local garden center to inquire whether the staff knew of any plants that discourage deer. The answer was not very encouraging.

The employee I spoke to, who gave her name as Rosemary, cited only daffodils as a common garden plant that deer are sure to leave alone. I know that they do love tulips, but some people try putting mothballs around their tulips to discourage deer from making a dessert of them.

Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Perennials, my gardening bible, also cites astilbe, bleeding heart, columbine, fox-glove, iris, periwinkle, lavender and sunflowers as possibilities of plants that deer are not fond of. This winter, while the snow flies outside and freezing rain taps at my window, I’ll plan next summer’s garden around these tips — out with the tulips, in with the lavender and sunflowers — and plenty of crushed stone to separate lawn and perennial beds from woods.
In the meantime, now that it’s time to rake leaves, I’ll follow my own advice about insect repellent and long sleeves. Oh yes — and my daily mantra spoken aloud to the rest of the family — "Did you check yourself for ticks""