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You’ve already heard about the devastating effects of Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne illness in the U.S. But there are others to have on your radar as the tick population booms this summer, including babesiosis, a disease that’s caused by microscopic parasites that infect the red blood cells, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In a recent report,
The Washington Post spoke to the family of Jeff Naticchia, 51, who started experiencing mysterious symptoms that eventually landed him in the emergency room. He was misdiagnosed with a kidney infection and only briefly felt better with antibiotics before his symptoms worsened. He couldn’t breathe well and the whites of his eyes turned yellow, forcing his doctors to move him to an intensive care unit, where he was placed on a ventilator.