Latin For Itch

SO, I've had severe itching all over my body for the last 4 months. At first I thought it was just because of the hot season but since hot season ended and I'm itching all the more, we decided that wasn't it.

Then, O. and my sister-in-law started itching too. We thought it was the water at our house. We thought a lot of things, but since O. has been itching the last few weeks too and he can't stand it he said I had to go to the doctor and figure out what this was.

I happen to love my dermatologist and so I went yesterday after my English class. I shared my symptoms and he asked if I had sores on my hands and I said, Oh yeah and he looked at them under his big magnifyer glass and then coolly proclaimed that I had SCABIES.

"You know what that is," he said, "you get them from rat fleas."

That's what I got. Scabies, Latin for "itch."

The doctor asked me how in the world I stood the itching for 4 months. I said, I thought it was because of the "hot season." Well, at least until I started to get the nasty, crusty blisters on my hands. Heck, I'm a mother, I can stand anything.

So, I come into O.'s office today to look up scabies on the internet. This is never a good idea.

Here's what I find: Scabies—A highly infectious disease of the skin that results in itchy areas with oozing crusts. Scabies is caused by mites, tiny arachnids that live in the skin as parasites.*

I was ok until I read the word "arachnids." That means spiders to you and me.

I'm like, you've got to be kidding me, I've got female spiders living under my skin laying their eggs in me and they've been there for 4 MONTHS! EWWWWWW!

Well, the doctor gave us special soap and lotions. The soap is supposed to stay on our skin for 10 minutes before we wash it off. That wasn't happening. 10 minutes in the shower. Uh uh.

Well, after reading about the spiders - Uh HUH! I'll keep that soap lathered on there for 20 minutes if I have to and just sit my soapy self down on the toilet to wait out the ten minutes. Believe you me.

*from ecohealth101.org

Where did we get it? Good questions. Well,when we moved into our present house from hell, the skeevy people building it were there before us. We cleaned everything before moving in but in the first week we killed a rat, probably left over from the skeevy people. No rats since then. I wonder tho.