I just finished reading your article about the young man who had such a difficult time obtaining the correct diagnosis for his tick borne disease and my thoughts go out to him and his family as our family has experienced a similar story over a tick bite.
Over ten years ago my husband had an allergic reaction in the middle of the night with hives, swelling, nausea, etc. We didn’t think too much of it until it happened again — the symptoms worse this time — again in the middle of the night. He got tested at an allergist but only found out he was allergic to dust, pollen and animal fur, the usual.
Over the past ten years, he would have these random allergic reactions three months apart, then six months, then 18 months, back to three months etc. The last time this anaphylactic reaction happened was at the end of January 2017 when in the middle of the night he was so bad off I had to call 911 and we wound up at Marlton Virtua.
We were referred to allergy Eric Bantz, MD, of Medford, who not only ran the standard scratch allergy tests that showed only tiny reaction to pork. He suggested further blood testing that came back so high on the chart for meat allergy he called my husband in the middle of the day to tell him to stop to eating beef, pork or veal immediately.
A Lone Star tick that apparently had caused him to become severely allergic to mammalian meat had bitten my husband. The randomness had to do with the quantity, digestion, etc. I now know one person at work who suffers from this and didn’t know why, and my husband has a client that has this condition as well. This tick lives on the white tail deer in our area, turkeys and wooded areas. I thought I would share because of where we live and the difficulty of the diagnosis.
Jen Warholak
