TICKED OFF!
©2020 by Shawn Jipp
On Wednesday, April 29th we went to Miles City Walmart for groceries. The last trip to Walmart had been 19 days previous. We had hoped we could have gotten enough food to last 30 days but Walmart is setting limits on product quantities of sometimes 2, sometimes 4 of any product selected. When products are not available, they substitute other items but sometimes they seem to just ignore some items completely.
Pat had ordered online a couple of days earlier. The Wednesday 9-10AM delivery window was selected. We left at 8AM and arrived into Walmart parking lot just before 9AM. They had not even gotten our order ready. Then they had problems pulling it up. We watched 5 other customers come and go after being loaded by the mask wearing Walmart employees. Pat was about to give it up, go into store with her N95 mask under her bandana, get a few critical items and drive off. I encouraged her to not take that risk and just wait and that they would eventually come out with our items. Finally at about 10:15 they brought everything out. Well, by ‘everything’ I mean most everything that had been ordered. No ground turkey, no diet root beer, no flour but amazingly we now had toilet paper and even some water based unscented baby wipes (these had been ordered as a substitute for toilet paper). By the time we got back home, 3 hours and 44 minutes had passed since we had left! But it was great knowing we once again had food.
After getting home, the task was to separate, unload and clean all of the groceries. I put our paper packaged products on an outdoor table to wait 24 hours before bringing them into RV since the virus can only survive up to 24 hours on paper (I have also seen figures of 16 hours but heck I’ll wait the extra hours to be safe!) I then sprayed cans and products in plastic bags with a 1:10 bleach solution and let it sit for a minimum of 10 minutes. These cans and plastic bags were in a large plastic bin and after at least 10 minutes, I then added enough wash water to completely submerge every item. Robyn then dried each item with a clean towel and put it away into RV. Including the unloading time, this disinfecting process took another hour. Fresh fruit such as organic apples, mango, and tangerines were more problematic. The plastic bag containing the organic fuji apples was carefully opened and turned upside down until the apples fell into a fruit bowl. The mango and apples will be washed with water before eating. The tangerine bag plastic netting was cut with scissors and opened and tilted until the tangerines fell into another fruit bowl. Yes, the scissors were also then sprayed with the bleach solution, sat for 10 minutes, then quenched with water and dried just like had been done with all the other plastic packaging.
That afternoon I found a tick crawling on a water hose outside. The day earlier we had found a tick crawling on surface inside the RV. It was now warmer, spring, and officially tick season! So Robyn asked me to check her body for ticks. I was shocked to see one attached to her back. I freaked her out by excitedly saying I had found one and not to move. I grabbed it with a tissue and pulled. Robyn yelled and said it hurt and she began crying. The little bugger now had some legs moving but it’s head was still buried inside Robyn’s skin! I quickly walked over to the cabin and told Pat what had happened. She had the expertise and magical special little combination tweezer/pliers/tick removal tool. She came over and it took two attempts for Pat to get the tick out completely. Robyn said it hurt the same each time as my failed attempt had. But Pat had been successful as she was a veteran at this. Robyn had previously told me that if she ever got a tick bite she would pack her stuff up and force me to drive her back to Las Vegas. Luckily she recanted.
Robyn, of course, immediately assumed she had now contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I tried to ease her fear by asking her if she suddenly had the desire to sing John Denver songs. She laughed (but only a little laugh). But the fact was we could not go online to research this illness until the next day as we had no electricity or internet by this time in the day. We definitely both went to sleep with anxiety.
The next day we researched ticks. Ticks are part of the arachnid family (spiders) with 8 legs. They are often found in the grass but occasionally on tree branches and hang their front two legs out waiting until some unsuspecting animal/person with fur, hair, or thick socks comes by to pick them up and take them away. Then they begin their climbing walk until they find their perfect place to insert their head, bite and begin engorging themselves on the host’s blood! Oh and just to be sure they get their blood, they often administer a local analgesic to the bite area so the host does not feel the bite and notice they are latched on. I have now become ticked-off by these hellish creatures and have added them to my list of personal hates such as roaches, fleas, venomous snakes, rabid rats/bats and incompetent and unscientific politicians!
There is no Lyme disease in Montana but there are cases of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, though fairly rare. There are about 5,000 cases reported per year in the United States. Yeah, it looks good about the same as the number of COVID-19 cases currently in just Nevada. Symptoms occur 2-14 days after an infected tick bites the host. Symptoms are usually flu like with a sudden onset of a high fever (yes, similar to Covid-19 and often a red rash. Left untreated, Rocky Mountain spotted fever can affect organs such as the brain and liver and can cause death(!) The standard treatment is to administer the antibiotic doxycycline ASAP. The antibiotic is given until 3 days after the fever subsides. A good thing about this illness is you can not aquire it ever again (apparently unlike Covid-19!).
The next day Robyn has no symptoms but found another tick crawling on her arm and she found one crawling on my stomach. Neither tick bit us. We will have to wait up to 14 days till we declare Robyn free of the R. rickettsii bacteria. For more wonderful, exciting, and graphic information, please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_spotted_fever and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickettsia_rickettsii
Pat has gotten bit every year she has been here (12 years) and has never gotten Rocky Mountain spotted fever. One year she discovered a tick in her belly button and removed it but the head stayed behind. Her belly button did become red and inflamed. Yuck!
Pat has a local friend that acquired Rocky Mountain spotted fever from a tick bite (and successfully recovered) however it did not occur in Montana. It happened it New Jersey! (yet another reason not to go to New Jersey!) She had visited a camp site and those ticks were VERY small, about the size of peppercorns. At least the local Montana variety are large enough to be seen and pulled off. They have so far been the size of a small to medium sized lady bug.
This whole subject really does tick me off.
