6-year-old Merritt boy paralyzed by tick bite, father urges caution
CBC
A Merritt, B.C., father is urging parents to be on the lookout for ticks while the weather warms up, after his six-year-old son was partially paralyzed by a tick bite last week.
Jamie Stevens said he and his son Milo usually go for small hikes on the bluff where they live. They had their usual hike in the grassy area on March 8.
The following Thursday, Milo woke up with wobbly legs and he was unable to walk. Milo was taken to hospital, but doctors couldn't pin point what the issue was and sent him home.
"My stepdaughter and her boyfriend had suggested that we check for ticks just in case they missed something," Jamie told CBC News.
"And lo and behold, I put my hands through [Milo's] hair and I felt a little bump and looked, and it was a pretty engorged tick. So, it had been there probably since Sunday."
It turns out Milo had been afflicted with a rare form of tick paralysis that's caused by the Rocky Mountain wood tick. HealthLink B.C. says is caused when venom is secreted by the female tick.
Jamie said he doesn't blame the doctors at the hospital for not finding the tick initially, and it was likely simply because of how Milo was lying on the hospital bed.
"They froze his head, and then they put some sort of topical cream on top of the tick. And then they just detached it from the scalp," the dad said.
"And then it was within two hours, three hours, he was better ... he was walking around pretty much normally."
HealthLink B.C. says symptoms of tick paralysis usually start four to seven days after the tick attaches itself to your body, and most cases occur in children.
Rob Higgins, an entomologist at Thompson Rivers University, told CBC News that he's confident a fair few dogs and cats are brought to vets with tick paralysis in the Interior region, which he described as being "in the hotspot" for the condition in North America.
"It's ascending paralysis that will eventually reach the respiratory muscles," the scientist said, adding the condition can be fatal.
"If you remove the tick, the symptoms normally completely resolved within an hour," he added.
Higgins said that cases usually peak in late March, as the arachnids start moving after the winter freeze and people are out and about.
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