What to know about tick bites and tick-borne illnesses

When Neal Nemhauser, 76, a retired accountant from Portland, Ore., visited a friend in Pennsylvania a few years ago, his friend’s part-time outdoor cat curled in his lap. He didn’t notice that a tiny tick had made its way onto his body through an opening in his shirt.

Several days later, an inflamed bulls’-eye rash appeared on his stomach where the arachnid had landed. Two weeks later, he was ill with Lyme disease. (He fully recovered after taking antibiotics.) “I was sicker than I have ever been,” he said, with chills, fever, night sweats, coughing, appetite loss, headache, extreme fatigue and bloody urine. “I was sleeping for most of the first week and unable to eat. The coughing was painful and scary when I couldn’t take a breath. Even the energy to get to the bathroom was a major effort.”

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