Mitey suckage.

Well, it's always something, isn't it?  This morning I am blogging from my bathtub while soaking in tea tree, neem, and lavender oils.  For 20 minutes.  So I've got a mug of tea and my netbook.  Why, you ask?  Let's see if I can keep this short.

Mom is in full time care in a small group home.  Since last October or November, she has had a skin rash of some sort that the doctor could not identify at first.  But she had red spots and was itchy, etc.  Her hands got especially bad -- her skin between her fingers got kind of crusty, presumably with dead skin cells.  So, for the last 4 weeks, I've been massaging healing oils into her hands and wrists when I visit.

Well, it turns out that Mom's "rash" is actually a scabies infestation.  "What's scabies?" you ask?  Well, meet Mr. or Mrs. Scabies (courtesy of Wikipedia):  

Apparently these little suckers live on humans and burrow their way into the skin (I'm guessing they eat their way in, rather than tunneling doggie-style with their hair-like extremities), lay eggs, then the eggs hatch, the larvae tunnel back out of the skin, mate with each other, rinse, repeat.  (That's a rough approximation -- apparently the females live in the burrows and the males run around on your skin.  Interesting , no?)  The process takes about 21 days, so you don't know that you have them for like 2-6 weeks.  The crawling around and the burrowing makes your skin itch.  And crawl, of course.

And here's the fun part.  They particularly like hands and the webbing between fingers and are transmitted by human contact.  Say, a hand massage?

Anyhoo, I thought I'd escaped clean, but then Monday evening, my wrists got all bitey-itchy.  And I woke up at 3 am feeling, or at least imagining that I could feel, these little suckers crawling around on me.  And I'd already washed the bedding Monday night and loaded up with tea tree oil, so I was clearly going to have to get more serious with the little buggers.  So I lost a day of work yesterday researching how to treat them, running to 3-4 different places to buy stuff to de-bug myself, my bed, my dogs, and my house.  The mattress is now sealed up in vinyl, so no bugs in or out (I should have done that years ago for my dust mite allergy anyway), the sheets, blankets, throws, pillows, the mattress, the mattress pad, and the thermal topper and its casing, were all washed in hot water and/or Borax, and/or sprayed.  The dog was sprayed and washed (she was not really happy with that process), the house was sprayed, and I was covered in stinky tea tree and/or neem oils in between soaking and scrubbing in and with neem oil.  So here I sit this morning in more tea tree and neem oils about to get out and put on more of the same.  I thought the tea tree was bad with it's heavy medicinal smell.  But the neem oil is worse -- think peanuts with garlic.  And the lavender oil doesn't help that much.  So there will be some heavy perfume spraying for -- THE NEXT 8 DAYS.  Because you've got to do this for 10 days to make sure you get them all.  Like I said, it's always something.  But I did do some yoga yesterday (after the McDonald's cheeseburger and small fries -- only 500 calories, let's not panic), so it wasn't all bad.

And, because my misery loves lots of company, here is what YOU are all sleeping with every night:

Isn't he handsome?  Kind of makes my mites look cute and cuddly. The house dust mite (sometimes referred to by allergists as HDM), is a cosmopolitan guest in human habitation. Dust mites feed on organic detritus such as flakes of shed human skin and flourish in the stable environment of dwellings. House dust mites are a common cause of asthma and allergic symptoms worldwide. Some of the gut enzymes (notably proteases) produced by the house mite persist in their fecal matter, and can be strongly allergenic.

(Thank you again, Wikipedia.org.)

And please note that the American HDM is a completely different species from the European HDM, which prefers brie, espresso, and Italian scooters.

Tomorrow:  "Insanity," the work out.  Brought to you by the infommercial I saw this morning.