I had every toe on my foot amputated after a tick bite
Tick tac toe?
With tick-borne afflictions spreading across the US at an alarming rate, there’s been an up-tick in horror stories involving this eight-legged scourge.
Recently, an Ohio man lost all the toes on one of his feet after a tick bite triggered an infection that snowballed out of control.
“It was infected that bad,” Tim Rosebrook told ABC13 of his arachnid-induced amputation marathon, which occurred following an ill-fated fishing trip last July.
He had reportedly returned home from the angling excursion to see that fish weren’t the only critters he’d caught — an engorged tick was nestled between the toes on his right foot.
The Ohioan subsequently removed the parasite, and forgot about the whole thing, until three weeks later when the tootsie started to turn black like frostbite.
Alarmed, Rosebrook reported to the Hickman hospital in Adrian, where doctors confirmed that his toe had become infected.
The patient was subsequently transferred to a facility in Flower, whereupon he underwent his first amputation.
“They checked me out there, and next thing I know they took off the third toe,” Rosebrook recalled.
Following the operation, the tick victim didn’t experience any other symptoms until November, when another digit started to change its pigment.
Rosebrook returned to the hospital in Flower, which referred him to a clinic in Toledo, where they took the toe off “right there in my room,” he said.
It was there that doctors discovered that the infection had metastasized throughout the patient’s entire foot.
He specifically suffered from critical limb ischemia, a serious strain of peripheral arterial disease that occurs when the arteries get blocked over time by an accumulation of plaque, according to UC Davis.
This can lead to reduced blood flow and the resultant prevention of proper healing from wounds — such as a tick bite.
As a result, patients with critical limb ischemia are “at a high risk of amputation,” according to Dr. Ahmad Younes, an interventional cardiologist at ProMedica who treated Rosebrook.
This author is just grateful that he wasn’t afflicted with this condition given the unfortunate location of his tick bite.
Fortunately, Dr. Younes and his team were able to avoid a below-the-knee amputation — the go-to course of action in these instances — by reconstructing the veins in the patient’s leg.
Unfortunately, this didn’t preclude Rosebrook from losing all his toes.
“So in that whole week, we went with taking a toe off, and then we went to working on the veins on the right leg, and then the following day — I think on the 25th — is when we took all the toes,” he described.
Accompanying photos show the patient’s affected foot, which had been reduced to a stump.
Rosebrook is now using his horrific experience as a cautionary tale against the perils of ignoring tick bites.
“If they see something like this, don’t wait,” warned Rosebrook.
Losing one’s limbs is just one side effect of being parasitized by these blood-sucking arachnids, which are spreading across the nation at an unprecedented rate.
The CDC estimates that approximately 476,000 people may get Lyme disease each year in the United States.
New York state alone has seen an average of 6,700 new cases of the condition each year with over 8,000 in 2019.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans could potentially be afflicted with Alpha-gal syndrome — a horrifying affliction that renders the sufferer violently allergic to red meat.
This involuntary conversion to veganism is spread by the Lone Star tick, an invasive species named for the signature dot on its back which is the most common variety on Long Island.
“It just flipped everything — turned my life upside down completely,” said New Jersey’s Craig Smith, 62, who was left unable to consume steak, pork or even dairy products sans suffering a serious reaction. “You get so frustrated. Food becomes an enemy to you.”
Perhaps most frightening of the tick-borne afflictions is Powassan, an incurable and potentially deadly virus known for causing encephalitis, swelling in the brain.
In May, a 58-year-old Maine man died of complications caused by the disease — the first fatality of 2023 linked to the affliction.
