Disturbing Find

I don't know if other people do this too or if it's just me, but I always kind of try to impress my children's doctors with my clean, well-kept children and my excellent parenting. I bathe them carefully, brush their teeth, dress them neatly, fix their hair, etc.

Today I took my clean, well-kept five-year-old to the doctor for her pre-kindergarten visit. As I stood at the check-in desk with her by my side, I looked down with approval at her shining hair neatly brushed back into a headband. Then I gasped. There was a tick on her ear! I have no idea where it came from or how it got there, as I would definitely have noticed it in her bath the night before and when I did her hair this morning.

Great. Now I'm at the doctor's office for a routine check-up and there's a tick attached to my clean, well-kept daughter. So with a red face, I confessed to the receptionist, "I just noticed a T-I-C-K on her ear." Lovely.

But I was careless: my daughter knows how to spell. She got very worried and asked, "Mama, do I really have a tick?"

The office handled it really well. The doctor saw us quickly and removed the tick, confirming that it wasn't embedded very deeply and had likely just attached on the way to the office. (Where? How? I still don't know. Was it still in our car from camping? Was it on our front grass? Ew.)

Anyway, Elizabeth is fine and we are currently tick-free once again (we think). But this episode is still disturbing to me. Not only did it ruin my facade of clean, well-kept children (not really that important) but it confirmed how either widespread ticks are or how difficult they are to find and remove. I mean, in addition to thorough tick-checks at our campsite and at home, I've bathed and lotioned Elizabeth twice since camping. And combed and done her hair several times as well. Ew!

And this was a nice big wood tick, not the more dangerous and much smaller deer tick. What chance do I have of finding deer ticks on my girls if I can't even control wood ticks?