Justin, they are hard to find... When I first was looking for one you had to join a special forum and introduce yourself before they would PM you a giant document on how to find one and how to get treated. It was full of all kinds of special etiquite on what to not say when you call the Dr's offices and all kinds of stuff. I don't know if it still works that way, but I will find you some links and send them to you. If I have my original email from them still I will send that to you as well (but remember things may have changed since then, so don't know how accurate the list is these days, and I think they only give you dr's in the area you request so I don't know how much help it will be for you. What I do know is before I ran out of health insurance and had to stop going back/getting treated, there were people from all over the country in the office. People from out west actually had to fly in to NJ to find doctors that knew what they were doing. One poor woman was telling me she drives all the way up from GA for every appointment and after years of misdiagnosis and being told it was all in her head, she was actually fine with that! Anyway, I will look for links/info for you first thing in the AM.

Of that snake or in general? I only have one other shot of that snake, I believe that milk was one of my finds during the hurricane a few weeks ago.



Edit: My bad, just checked the date. I can't remember when or where I road cruised this one, but it wasn't the hurricane day.
I am assuming it was another big rain storm though or I would have just taken the pictures as I chased it off the road, instead of
bringing it back to the car to my camera. lol

Wait, what milk snake?



If you meant more random pictures, here ya go. lol..

This was hurricane herping, so forgive the horrible shots. Something about heavy rain and cameras don't mix well.



Pines camping:



Testing new camo design on my home builds. Yeah, it's a dark picture. That's the point. haha.


Easier kayaking than the trek Doug and I took. A bit spookier too:


Survival stuff:


Costa Rica flashback


An old pic that I just stumbled on while looking around my hard drive.

Jeff this is really interesting stuff. Even more so that I had a closer than normal brush with Lymes this year.
A day after being in the field (clothes changed and showered) I woke to find a tick dug into my chest but this time there was the tell tale bulls eye rash around it. Damn, a perfect ring.
I called the Dr.s office to make an appointment and the receptionist said "we don't test for that any more, we wait for symptoms to appear , then we will treat it"!
Huh? did I just hear that right? I told her the symptoms as I know them are fatigue and aches and pains in the joints. Being a 50 year old with 23 of those years battling in a jail for a living how the hell am I going to tell if its lymes or the mileage? She made the appointment.

Once there the Dr told me the receptionist was wrong, that there is a heavy dose of antibiotic that if taken can prevent the lymes from taking hold but it has to be taken within the first 48 hours of being bitten.
So i did and have been back for follow up blood tests. So far, no lyme.
I may have dodged the bullet.
Mike.

Thanks, Notread. I meant just the milk, but randoms are good, too. Really nice finds there.

1. no I never saw a bullesye on any of my tick bites.
2. they do not need 24 hours to transmit lymes , my specialist says all it takes is the bite,

3. the reason your symtoms went away and came back is because your short dose of antibiotic simply killed some of the lymes and the rest sunk deeper into your tissue and went dormant. then come back 6 months,a year , or whenever

4. got my specialist from research from my sister in law. we have 15 people in the family ranging from mild infection to very bad with 2 secondary infections(one has a very rare co-infection the comes from ticks feeding on rabbits that is a new case in the north east)

5. false negatives are caused because when they check for lymes, they don't look for lymes(that would take a biopsy to find) they are actually looking for antibodies. so my doctor says if it is neither negative or positive, you have been exposed and probably have it. Then he goes by all your symptoms to determine treatment.

6. lastly , some of these specialist(as jeff pointed out) don't advertise much because of the way they are treated by the establishment( allmost like they are witch doctors) and are not even covered under most insurances,
our treatments have cost me and arm and a leg, not to mention they don't cover the prescriptions either.

Chris, missed that question...

When I got reinfected I got a bullseye around a lymph node, not at the actual bite site. It grew to cover from the top of my shoulder to the side of my neck just below the jaw line, give or take.

Here it is when I first noticed it. Wish I took more pictures as it spread but oh well.

Fox?

Edit: Just saw the white belly, so Red?

Is it from snakes on a train?

best movie ever...

"did you just say mind-bottling?"

Its blades of glory. I'm sad that I recognised it. Bob didn't you quote that movie on the maryland chapter trip in may? You really like that movie. ha

I may have. It's one of the ones my kids watch constantly. I could recite the movie. Haha

Yup. It's a very, very angry red squirrel. Gray squirrels have nothing on the intensity of an angry red!

Lol, I didn't think it was. It was just an excuse to put up that movie trailer that I just had to share because it is so awful...

brick is terrified of angry reds.

Jeff,Millside,et al. in all seriousness how do you know to attribute the rage and and whatnot to part of the Lyme symptoms,as opposed to say a nervous breakdown,anxiety or something along those lines? Even with a well understood disease unlike Lymes it would be unclear where such mental/emotional symptoms 'come from',I mean there's no difeinitive line that clearly can be traced back with any certainty at all to what the source of it could be,it all kinda runs/bleeds together no?

Fascinating/intruiging stuff.....

I'm terrified of reds period! I was gonna herp with mcurrie until I found out he's married to another one. I didn't like my 3:1, reds to me odds out in the middle of the woods. I made up some excuse like I had a stomach virus or something.

A couple of reasons, actually. First, all the neurological symptoms are well documented with lyme patients showing the obvious pattern that it is Lyme. 2nd, the problems come on post-infection and in many cases in great contradiction to the persons pre-infection nature. Then, with effective anti-biotic treatments the symptoms fade and eventually are gone when you are healthy again.

With no source to back this statement, it is my understanding that the neurological symptoms are the result of the Lyme spirochetes tunneling into brain tissue as it does through-out the body. This goes well with the fact that neurological symptoms are typically late stage Lyme meaning the spirochetes have had a chance to get that far. Case in point, another illness that is a spirochete and perhaps closely related to Lyme: syphilis. Syphilis causes neurological damage in the same way as (or as I understand it) lyme does and it is much more understood and studied.

Ohhhh, that is just bad! haha

Ha ha, my favorite part is the giant snake eating the train at the end

The best part about snakes on a train is we sat around a year before it came out talking about making it into a movie and making it purposely bad and hilarious. of course someone stole my ideas again damn this world.

JEFF-still would like to get that list of LYME DOC's from you....
also-if your life's presumably still at risk for doing so(?)-you may want to take your last name off these pics you posted.