this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
418 points (98.6% liked)

science

20981 readers
577 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1116242

Woke ticks are out to turn the US South into soyboys > > (did I do that right?)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'll tell you why. Because it's fucking expensive.

I had what looked like a classic "bullseye" tick bite (several, actually). People told me "run, don't walk, to the ER". So I did.

The ER doc told me it was probably fine but I should see my doctor. $600. They had the gall to bill me $600 for telling me to go see a doctor. And that's with "good" insurance.

I still have no idea what caused those marks.

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm not gonna justify a $600 bill for a doctor to prescribe penicillin. But $600 less in your wallet is far better than borreliosis.

And what kind of doc saw your bullseye mark and said "it's probably fine". That's just incompetence. If you have the bullseye mark, you're not fine. You need penicillin or you risk borreliosis.

Anyhow. My bill was $20 for the visit and about $12 for penicillin, 3 grams a day for 10 days.

If you have the bullseye mark, you’re not fine. You need penicillin or you risk borreliosis.

Yeah, I was pretty freaked out. But on that part, I assume they just knew better than I did. To me it looked a lot like tick bite pictures I found on the internet, but I'm certainly no expert. I saw my GP ASAP after that and he didn't think it was from ticks either. Maybe it was some other kind of bug bite, or an allergic reaction to some other woodsy thing. No way to know, since it all went away on its own in the end.

I'd advocate for erring on the side of caution, but I totally understand why people instead err on the side of not getting fucked over by medical bills.