UK based illness and diseases

[GearGuru]

I picked up some chiggers or deer mites as they were calling them on the Fundamentals course - drove me crazy for a few nights with the itching in your pant and sock lines!!! The other lad who also got bites came up in some nasty looking blisters!! Not something I want to get again

 

[Tony]

It's slightly beyond the title scope but midgies and mozzies, i hate them and they love me, they can cause me some grief with swelling bites and i've a tendency to scratch and scratch some more.

Horse flies, bad news....

 

[MrEd]

to be honest im more worried about traumatic injuries than getting ill while out mooching, but things to consider aswell especially as we are coming up to summer and people are going to be out in the sun more is things like sunburn, dehydration, heat stroke etc all of which can make you very ill, granted they arent caused by rats **** or whatever but they arent fun

 

[Ogri the trog]

I think the common cold is worthy of mention here,
seeing as we live most of our lives in centrally heated homes and wander outdoors in all weathers, often in damp, cold and breezy conditions - maybe even for a few days at a time.
Becoming cold, hungry and a little bit challenged by the environment is where we all start off, then couple that with being in contact with other people in a similar situation, its not long before we all start sniffing and sneezing.
While the common cold is more of an inconvenience than an incapacitiation event, it can make you uncomfortable, less receptive to learning and feel like not doing it again.

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[BorderReiver]

to be honest im more worried about traumatic injuries than getting ill while out mooching, but things to consider aswell especially as we are coming up to summer and people are going to be out in the sun more is things like sunburn, dehydration, heat stroke etc all of which can make you very ill, granted they arent caused by rats **** or whatever but they arent fun

Best not to forget the very real risk of skin cancer.

 

[Melonfish]

Bites from many insects introduce bacteria, if scratched and untreated these can end up infected and even get as far as Cellulitis, which is pretty nasty!

also i'm now of the school where i no longer call it Asthma, its now A Cronic Lung Condition.
all the respiritory specialists we see (some really good ones too) now call it this because they believe that the term asthma is making the condition seem "mundane" when it is in fact very dangerous. - Random rant i know but when i see "Asthma" now i have to speak my 2p worth

 

[_mark_]

as we are coming up to summer and people are going to be out in the sun more is things like sunburn, dehydration, heat stroke etc all of which can make you very ill,

I'll second this, I find I am a lot more blasé in warm weather than cold! Out in the sun yesterday around 10-11.00 for a couple of hours and got sunburned to an uncomfortable degree, spent the rest of the day regretting my haste, indoors.

Not a disease but unpleasant all the same, scabies.

 

[Tricia]

TB it is possible to catch TB from bone dust, i think you also catch brusellosis(sp?), in the same way. Bone dust is really bad for your lungs anyway . wear a mask or use hand tools on wet bone if working wild animal bone

That`s true, and bone dust can actually be sharp enough to cut lung tissue. Also second the imported skins issue, especially those from Turkey and Africa.
Not a disease at all, but the risk of accident, especially in my part of the UK, in an isolated area, shouldn`t be underestimated. Isn`t always a good idea to assume cellphone coverage either, since there are many dead spots here with no signal. Someone I know got soaked simply trying to cross a full wet ditch, and even in July there was a danger from hypothermia!

 

[crazydave]

Dont know if it counts but on the being bitten front I picked up a case of Chiggers last year while out amongst the trees. Took a good week of baths & antiseptic wipes, plus lots of washing of coats etc.. before I got rid of them.

hang on chiggers arent here in the UK unless its just turned up and you were very unlucky! hang on, hmmm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombiculidae so the uk does have a harvest mite but I'd never heard of anyone having problems with them. if anyone would be likely to get eaten it would be troops and we never had any lessons or advisories on them.

british water is slowly getting nastier, the commonest is crypto spiridium which is harder to kill than most of the other cysts and flukes but rarely kills giving the victim a nasty bout of the trots. the manchester water main loses million of gallons a year because they have to keep it pressurised in order to prevent another crypto outbreak from ground water getting in through the leaky brickwork. the standard chlorination doesnt kill it, the city of chicago had to install and ozone treatment plant to deal with their problems with contaminated source water.

giardia is also working its way into the water system and is a nasty one taking days rather than weeks to have a negative effect on your health. a sand filter or side pool can do enough to take them out of the water as the flukes are quite big. iodine is the most surefire non boiling non posh filter way of killing it off.

tick season now so best get some removers from the local vets

 

[w00dsmoke]

My wife n I got really badly affected in Mull by harvest mites. Same symptoms and all because we camped on short cropped grass and sat outside the lavuu on the bare grass with shorts on. It was excruciating for days.

 

[Pasture]

VASCULITIS -: http://vasculitis.med.jhu.edu/index.html

I was asked when diagnosed if i'd been bitten by any insects

 

[Lupin Rider]

Cellulitis is definitely something we should all know about. i've had two episodes of it becoming lymphangitis, once as a student in my thumb which gave me a red line up to mid forearm in 3 hours and a few years ago in my leg. second time the red line reached my groin from a scratch on top of my foot (injury caused when surfing in a wetsuit!). both needed strong antibiotics to fix. the leg incident the red line was an inch across and growing by about an other inch in 20minutes by the time i saw it.

 

[Harvestman]

On the topic of bites and stings, wasp stings are probably the nastiest thing that can happen, especially if you are allergic (anaphylactic shock), although I personally hate horseflies/clegs.

Also worth bearing in mind is that ordinary 'routine' diseases, like cold, flu, etc, should be taken more seriously if they hit you when you are out and about, especially if you are any distance away from other people. The loss of energy, vomiting, inability to get warm and so on are much more significant.