On Saturday, January 23, 2016 the Ticked Off Music Fest held its fifth event since 2013 and its first event off of the contiguous US mainland. It was hosted in a location that most people would think to be the last place where Lyme disease could appear… the island of Oahu, Hawaii.
Even in the Lyme community, Hawaii is thought to be a bit of a “safe zone” where no ticks exist and incidents of infection and Lyme patients is nil. I admit to being of this mind when I got a call in the fall of last year from two Lyme patients living on two separate islands in Hawaii, inviting us to host an event there.