Originally Posted by
FBinNY
If you have a cooperative doctor, who's willing to trust you to adhere to protocols, you might ask for a script for antibiotics, with the understanding that you'll only take them when indicated, ie. you discover a feeding tick.
This is a balancing act between abuse because of excess caution and underprescribing while awaiting confirmation of infection. It's not unreasonable to start a course of antibiotics while awaiting lab results, if there's reasonable suspicion.
Whether you're temperamentally able and willing to adhere to guidelines, is something for you and your doctor to discuss.
However, tick bite and snake bite are very different in terms of urgency. I don't think a few days delay would matter even if bitten by an infected tick. So I'd be more inclined to wait and deal with that situation if and when it arises.
When I lived in Kansas I got a tick bite on my abdomen that developed an area of swelling and a distinct ring the size of a dinner plate within hours, a doctor took one look and put me on the most awful regimen of antibiotics I have ever been on. Was terribly feeble and sick within a day, not sure if from the meds or some fast acting infection it was fighting. Was so fevered and ill that I set a tent up in my living room, made a cardboard vent from the window unit AC , and lay in it sweating for days. Friends brought me food.
The tick was sent in for testing, and came back "undetermined". This was 15 years ago, I was lucky that the doctor I went to was familiar with tick born infections. He suspected Rocky Mountain Spotted fever.
Within the couple of decades or so ticks have exploded in population in the Ozarks. A lot of that is due to a lack of controlled undergrowth burn offs within that time. When camping in state lands that still have burns, ticks are fairly rare. Elsewhere you can get them on you walking in the driveway.