Tick bite turns man’s tongue and eyes black: Three shots of adrenaline needed to help him breathe

A MAN thought he was going to die after he suffered a severe allergic reaction to a tick bite and watched his eyes and tongue turn black before his throat started to close up on the way to hospital.

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AN Avalon dad has revealed how a random tick bite left him fearing for his life after his throat started to close up and his eyes and tongue turned black.

Doctors had to give Michael Kiernan three emergency shots of adrenaline to help him breathe in a terrifying ordeal triggered by a simple visit outdoors to put out his rubbish bins.

Michael Kiernan was bitten by a tick as he took the bins out.

He even turned to his wife Lisa as she was driving him to hospital and said: “I think this tick is going to take me out”.

The 53-year-old wool trader believes he picked up the parasite, which must have fallen from a tree, as he was going to the bins.

Not long after he noticed a tick burrowing into his neck, so his wife pulled it out with her fingertips.

“I could feel the poison going in while she was pulling it out,” said Mr Kiernan, who now knows the safest way to remove a tick is to freeze it with a spray and wait for it to drop off.

“Within five minutes all my glands under my arms and in my groin started to burn, so I grabbed a pack of frozen peas to cool them down.”

After a shower to help reduce the burning he looked in the mirror and saw his tongue and eyes had turned black.

“I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, take me to hospital’,” he said.

As his wife was driving round the Bilgola bends, his throat began to close, his breathing slowed and his vision started to go.

Doctors at Mona Vale Hospital immediately administered adrenaline and as he was recovering explained that he had developed a life-threatening allergy to ticks and any further bites could be even more serious.

A juvenile paralysis tick. Paralysis ticks have a distinctive triangular-shaped head.

Mr Kiernan said he had suffered around half a dozen tick bites in the last 15 years, but on this occasion it triggered an anaphylactic reaction.

He now has to carry Epipens wherever he goes.

“I’ve never been sick in my life, I’ve had no allergies and never had to go to hospital for anything,” he said.

The northern beaches is a world hotspot for ticks with an increasing number of people becoming sick or developing allergies to them or mammalian meats following bites.

“I do walk around feeling a bit nervous now and I treat these ticks with a bit of respect,” Mr Kiernan said.

Fast facts:

■ Tick bites may result in allergic reactions to the ticks themselves, including anaphylaxis, and, rarely, there have been fatalities.

■ Crucially, people who suffer an anaphylactic reaction to a tick only do so when the tick is disturbed.

■ Tick bites can also cause mild to life-threatening allergic reactions to mammalian meats such as beef, pork, lamb, kangaroo, goat and venison.

■ Some people are so sensitive, they even react to mammal products, particularly, their milks and gelatine. Any product derived from mammals may cause allergic reactions, making avoidance very difficult as the allergen may be found in a wide range of agents used in medical treatments, as well as in foods.

■ Swellings at the site of a tick bite can occur before either mammalian meat allergy or tick anaphylaxis appears.