Several months ago my daughter was complaining about her head itching. I thought it was because I changed shampoo. We switched back to what we were using and her itching was the same. She tried hot oil treatments and she would only get temporary relief. I kept checking her head for lice and nothing but little bites all over her scalp. I decided it was time for a nix kit and finally she had relief. I then did all the bedding in hot water and the normal routine we are to do for treating head lice. The next day more itching and I was also itching from cleaning her room. My boyfriend however had already been to the ER several times before this with rashes, thinking it was from the floral scented dryer sheets and I had just got done rewashing all his laundry. Then we thought body lice after looking for answers on the net.
The stories I was reading just didn’t add up. I read head lice stays mostly on the head…we were itching all over and body lice stays mostly on the body. Our heads were itching and the crawling was something out of a horror movie. We had bites all over us. We tried the olive oil and saran wrap on our heads the crawling got worse and bites all over our neck and hair line. Then they attacked our eyebrows and lashes. The next thing I knew we are all fighting over the shower and tub, scalding our heads. We bagged all of our clothes and even had to bag books, shoes, and the next thing you know our everyday belongings are all outside bagged on the porch.
I was so ashamed wondering what the neighbors were thinking, our porch looked like a thrift store. I fogged the house, sprayed all the methoprines and permethrins and had to go to the ER, I privately told them I thought we had body lice. They looked at me like “EWWWW!” and told me to go to the waiting room. Mind you…if I was infested with lice (the waiting room?) and it would be several hours. I don’t think I want any poor old soul in that hospital not to mention babies, children or even my worst enemy to have to deal with this hell my boyfriend, daughter and I are dealing with. Well I split.
This has been going on for over three months now. We at the time were even considering…well we just wanted to DIE. Then a few days later, back to the hospital. They prescribed Elimite lotion and said we were to do another nix kit. We couldn’t wait for nighttime, that we normally dread, but the Elimite cream was to be applied at night and the nurse said its ok to go to bed and let them bite us because every time they bite us they would die. Well, they had a picnic on us, and we are thinking for every 30 bites that would 30 less. We couldn’t take it any longer, out came the vac and steamer with hot water. At 5 am we are all anxious to get our showers, as this was all the longer we were to leave that cream on our skin. We had no relief that night whatsoever. After the showers we were still miserable and going on our third bottle of tea tree oil, which was our only relief. I would even mix it in our shampoo, nit picking our long hair to pieces day in and day out.
My boyfriend had me shave his head bald. We experimented with a lot of different things for some relief like gojo in my hair, then mayo, vicks, muscle rub, hot sauce on my legs and at the same time I am very upset because the hospital didn’t do a skin scraping and I didn’t know what we were up against and fighting. Here it is several weeks before Christmas everyone is decorating for the holidays and I am sealing off rooms with plastic and no heat in them, thinking whatever it is I will freeze it to death. At this time we are very close to a nervous breakdown. Constantly crying, no answers, no one to talk to, wouldn’t answer our door to visitors and were very close to the end of our ropes.
It’s wintertime but we couldn’t dress warm, wear socks or shoes, weren’t able to cover up, we couldn’t even sit on our couch, stayed confined to our tile floor in the dining room…sleeping sitting up on hard chairs, burned my daughters bed, and deciding to burn everything we had. Washer and dryer running nonstop. Then I got this idea scabies has to be a mite, for there were these little tiny bugs you could barely see in the bathwater, and we would see different things coming from our hair with a flashlight in the tub. It must of been its different life cycles, and every time I would do any extensive cleaning it would get worse. We even used the Shark Steamer on everything. I kept feeling a lot of crawling and biting on my skin.
Then I called the hospital and they told me to call my doctor, we might need a stronger prescription, that the lice or scabies might be resistant to the pyrethins. I was thinking “Oh my dear God in heaven please help us”, our bodies can’t take any more poisons. I kept wondering what I was doing wrong…being the clean freak that I have always been and now graduating to a new level called ‘obsessive compulsive’. We would go days without sleep while researching on the net. I read all about scabies and again I knew it wasn’t scabies because the Elimite cream should have relieved us and didn’t, and the bites were different. I call this hotline on the internet thinking maybe this person will educate me about the scabies. Well, it turned out to be even worse, they told me it was Morgellons and to watch this 7 minute video and call them back. I watched the first minute of it and couldn’t watch anymore. I started shaking, thought I was going into a convulsion from the shaking. I ran to the bathroom and broke down crying while in the tub. Then I prayed to God even harder and low and behold I find this website and the bird mite story entitled “The Worst Bug Story Ever.” I read it and it was what I am going through to a ‘T’!
I feed the birds close to my house and they do get in my attic ceiling. I realize now what I am up against and I have recently got the infestation under control thanks to birdmites.org. I think your website is absolutely wonderful! I bookmarked it and live by it everyday. I just stocked up on mouthwash, gold bond powder, muleteam borax, epsom salts, etc. We are now having an early Christmas for our prayers were answered. Our home isn’t totally mite free but is bearable and under control, we have a lot of sealing up to do. All we want for Christmas this year is for our lives to be back to normal, it was the everyday little things we would do that we miss. We feel we will never be the same from this nightmare but at the same time we are very relieved to know what was attacking us and our home. I do feel very strongly that the public and health care professionals should be aware of this mite infestation so people can be treated properly and know exactly what they are up against. If it was posted on the State Health Dept. and the CDC websites where a lot of people go to find answers like I did, maybe it would have saved our sanity.
K.
