Mama to Many (Tennessee) on 06/22/2014:
My two year old had two tick bites that really got irritated looking. They did not get bulls eye rashes, but the redness was surrounding the bite larger than a silver dollar, a little swollen and red and hot. I wanted to do something for the immediate irritation and itchiness they were causing him. I love to use peppermint essential oil for "hot" bites and stings, but I was afraid he would scratch the bites and then inadvertently touch his eyes and that would burn. So I put a larger drop of castor oil in my hand (because you can't get a small drop of castor oil! ) and added 1 drop of peppermint essential oil and 1 drop of tea tree essential oil. This did seem to offer relief. I repeated the process every few hours for a couple of days and the bites looked better each time and now are barely noticeable. I would have liked to have put charcoal poultices on those bites, but they were in awkward places to accomplish that.
I like to spray apple cider vinegar on bites and find that helps a lot with the itch, but my little ones don't like it because it stings. The castor oil and essential oils were close by and I decided to try them out. Oh, I also put some colloidal silver on the bites a few times.
He has other tick bites but none that looked like this. Because of the risk of tick-borne disease I will likely keep him on some vitamin C and colloidal silver internally the rest of the summer.
~Mama to Many~
