Red dots covering Bob Morrison's body turned out to be hundreds of larval ticks

Medical puzzle follows Springfield man's outdoor encounter

Red dots covering Bob Morrison's body turned out to be hundreds of larval ticks

5:58 AM, Sep 17, 2012   |  

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Bob Morrison

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Wes Johnson

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One week after Bob Morrison got over 500 tick bites in Taney County, the bites are on the mend. / Valerie Mosley/News-Leader

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Bob Morrison was perplexed by the strange red dots marching slowly up his body. Was it some kind of rash? A pox-like virus?
None of the above. After taking a close look with a magnifying glass, Morrison’s doctor found the source of the marks — more than 500 of them.
Larval ticks. Lots of them.
“My wife and I went out to visit a vacant lot in Walnut Shade and I walked into some brush — it wasn’t even thick brush — and I didn’t think anything about it,” Morrison recalled.
A few hours later, the first red bumps appeared on his legs. Over the next day, the red dots spread up his waist and by Sunday — two days later, they had spread up to his armpits.
“I’ve dealt with chiggers before, but this was different,” Morrison said. “It was starting to spread to my arms, and that’s when we discussed whether I should go to the E.R. But I had no fever, no nausea, just a low-grade sort of itching. But I noticed when I got back into my vehicle it got worse.”
The next day he called his physician, Dr. Stephen Reeder at the Diagnostic Clinic in Springfield. They went down the list of possibilities. Chickenpox? He’d already had it. Virus? No symptoms that would explain a viral infection.
The look, close-up, answered the questions.
“He got a magnifying glass and as soon as he put it on one bump he said, ‘It’s ticks’!” Morrison said. “There was just this tiny little black mark in the middle of the bump, but he got some tweezers and pulled it off.”
The speck of an insect was a six-legged larval tick, the first stage in a tick’s life cycle. Tick larvae hatch in the spring from tiny eggs, then wait for a host animal to walk by to grab a quick blood meal. The larva drops to the ground, where it molts into an eight-legged tick nymph and seeks another host.
At any stage, the bite of a tick can transmit some serious diseases. Morrison said his doctor prescribed a regimen of doxycycline, a powerful antibiotic that should prevent Morrison from contracting Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichia, Lyme disease or the related Lyme-like disease.
 “I’ve walked in the woods all my life,” Morrison said, after resolving his tick ordeal. “I used to play in the woods, but I’ve never run into anything like this. It’s so strange.”
Rob Lawrence, an entomologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, said it’s not unusual to encounter large numbers of tick larvae in Missouri.
“They crawl up various types of foliage, and if you walk through a field of tall grass there could be literally thousands of them in a small area,” Lawrence said.
Summer and fall appear to be when larval ticks are at their worst. They feed on warm-blooded animals, especially deer, birds and rodents. After going through their nymph stage, adult ticks emerge in force in the spring after hard freezes are over, hungry for a meal.
In Greene County, confirmed cases of tick-borne diseases typically peak in June and July, according to Kendra Findley, administrator of community health with the Springfield-Greene County Health Department.
She said ehrlichia and Rocky Mountain spotted fever typically begin with flu-like symptoms, following a tick bite. Fever, chills, splitting headache, fatigue. Some people can develop a red rash.
“Most people get over it on their own, though some do require antibiotics,” she said. “There is a danger of more serious problems if a person’s immune system is compromised. In those instances, a tick bite can be fatal.”
There have been no tick-related fatalities in Greene County in recent years. But Findley cautioned people who go into grassy areas or forests to wear light clothing so they can more easily see and remove ticks. She also recommended using tick repellent containing DEET, which can be applied to the skin, or permethrin, which is intended to be sprayed on clothing, to keep ticks from biting.
A tick that does become attached should be carefully pulled off, using tweezers as close to the tick’s head as possible. The bite should be cleaned with soap and water.
Anyone who later feels flu-like symptoms should contact his or her doctor.
“The quicker antibiotics are given, the shorter the length of sickness,” she said. “There is a tick-panel blood test that identifies what kind of illness a person has.”