Gigglesnort!!! - ticked off edition

 

Dr. Bill England shared this tale with an e-mail list of which I'm also a member.  He gave me permission to publish it here, for which my grateful thanks.

There are innumerable folk remedies for removing ticks. Some work better than others. To whit:

Almost every Friday/Saturday night in the ER we would hear a roaring pickup engine, the squeal of locked-up brakes and tires, and within seconds have a drunk guy dash in through the ambulance entrance yelling, "We got Buck in the truck, and he's hurt bad!" This is a Buck story.

For the twenty years I practiced in Idaho, I would have several people come in every summer with ticks attached to their bodies, naturally wanting the ticks removed. It's actually pretty easy to do (if you do it correctly) and I've shared my technique with the List. But Idaho is high desert with low humidity, so we have few ticks and many people have never had to remove one.

But Missouri is another story and ticks are abundant. As I told patients, I've pulled off more ticks from one of my dogs in one day in May in Missouri, then my total experience practicing in Idaho. So Missourians are familiar with ticks and can come to blows arguing the finer points of tick removal.

My ER was in Jefferson City, the state capital and on the south bank of the Missouri River. The Missouri is heavily channelized and levied, and huge barges come down the river day and night, so it is no place to recreate. But the tributary rivers like the Moreau, Gasconade, and Osage are both lovely and very popular. There is even a nice state park at the confluence of the Osage and the Missouri, and people enjoy camping, fishing or jugging for catfish, and drinking mass quantities of ethanol.

Buck and his pals were camping at that park one fine Saturday evening in June, pretending to fish and succeeding in getting really hammered. About midnight Buck staggered down to the edge of the Osage to recycle the beer he had been swilling. But in the light of the campfire and nearly full moon, he was quite dismayed to see a fat black tick embedded in Mr. Happy.

He weaved back to the campfire, shook his Johnson, and stated the nature of his medical emergency. His equally drunk colleagues inspected the tick and dick with concern. The brain trust provided a variety of opinions and proposed interventions.

The first consultant exclaimed, "A tick--a tick he cannot abide alcohol. You take this here Everclear and douse that damn tick and the M--F-- will back right out." He anointed the area with Everclear and the group watched expectantly. But the tick never moved.

The second drunken expert opined "A tick can't take fire. You take the cherry of this here Camel and put it on his ass and he is gone!" He took his cigarette and touched the glowing tip to the poor little arachnid.

Of course, enough Everclear remained to provide abundant fuel. Buck watched in horror as his favorite body part erupted in flames. He ran screaming into the waters of the Osage, hoping to extinguish the weiner roast.

With much pleading and yet more booze, his pals finally coaxed him out of the river and carried him to the Ford F-150. They proceeded at an excessive rate of speed to my ER, slid into the ambulance bay, and ran in screaming "We got Buck in the truck, and he's hurt bad!"

The team wheeled a trauma stretcher out to the pickup, slid Buck onto it, and brought him into the trauma bay. I found a roaring drunk young white male with NO pubic hair and the front of his Fruit of the Looms burned beyond recognition. He had first and second degree burns of his genitalia, thighs, and lower abdomen. And he had a tick on the end of his very red penis.

After getting Buck calmed down and reassuring him that his woody had not been burned to ash, we cleaned, debrided, and dressed his burns, updated his tetanus booster, and I gently removed the tick. Still alive, kicking, but pretty happy from all that Everclear!

Buck was decidedly less happy, but did make a full recovery.

I think I've met Buck, and his friends, too.  They're legion, and they're all over the place . . .

Peter