[nickysielicki]

If you live in the Northeast or Midwest, unless you spend zero time in the woods (and you shouldn't, because the woods are great), you will get a deer tick on you at some point, and it might carry lyme.

My strategy? Go online and illegally buy doxycycline intended for fish tanks. The pills are exactly the same color, shape, and size as what you'd get from a pharmacy. If you find a tick on yourself, remove the tick correctly (do not crush his body), then crush a pill and make a paste, which you should apply topically.

If you wait to see a rash, you've waited too long. If you wait until you feel sick a few weeks later, you've waited too long. There are studies that report the rash appears only about half the time, and the blood tests are inaccurate for the first month or so after exposure.

[nate_meurer]

In addition to my other comment, I think a warning is in order for anyone reading the parent comment:

This is a good demonstration of the risk of taking medical advice from random internet strangers. nickysielicki's advice is useless at best, and it can do harm if someone is relying on it to protect them from infection. In particular, if you have the doxycycline tablets, you'd be better off swallowing one rather than trying to make some kind of salve with it. Better yet, do some research and talk to a qualified medical professional about borreliosis prevention.

[nate_meurer]

At least one study [1] finds topical doxycycline to be useless for prophylactic treatment of lyme. Do you have any evidence supporting its use?

1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910720/

[oblongx]

I know my infectious disease doctor told me to take a one day oral dose as a prophylactic treatment after you pull off the tick.

[nate_meurer]

That has nothing to do with its topical application. Drugs that perform well via one route are often ineffective via the other. According to the study I linked, that appears to be case here.

[oblongx]

Right, pretty sure we agree on that one. I thought I was backing you up, suppose I should have replied to parent comment instead...

[nate_meurer]

My bad, I misread it as a bit of a counterpoint.

[dreamcompiler]

Besides the other warnings here, you should also be aware that oral ingestion of doxycycline makes many people photosensitive. So if you were an outdoorsy person in the first place, you may need to change your behavior by staying indoors -- or at least cover up -- if you're taking doxycycline.