I had scabies once when I was younger. Everywhere. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I got a nice little case of poison oak at the same time.
I no longer fear hell.
Anyway, what ended up getting rid of scabies, was quell lotion. Alot of it. Showered with it like soap and shampoo. It went away in a few days. Good luck to you, I know how miserable that problem can make you.
chalmydia isn’t “shunnable.” It’s pretty fricking common, actually, the main problem being that it can be asymptomatic while doing serious damage. It’s the one people don’t get treated for–not because it’s so horrible to have, but because they don’t know they have it.
I never quite got why some things are supposed to be so shameful. HPV is so common it’s like a miracle if a sexually active person doesn’t pick one of them up somewhere, but anyone who actually gets “warts” is supposed to be nasty. Go figure.
OK, I have been reading about it. It is the same parasite which causes the mange in animals.
Now I am itching everywhere.
Does scabies itch most of the time? Or can it itch for a while and then not itch for many days?
Have you had any animal contact lately? I caught scabies from a dog I owned. I got the dog when she was a few weeks old. She had been living in a barn and caught scabies from the chickens. When I got her she was covered with little scabs and I was told it was just little cuts from living in hay.
Not so…
A trip to the vet made me realize why the dog wasn’t getting any better and why I was getting little red spots around my belt line.
Scabies. Yech…
I used the prescription lotion and washed down everything I’d sat in, layed in, etc. in very hot water and/or bleach solution. The scabies cleared out pronto.
You think THAT’s bad…
Back in undergrad I suffered with spots/itching/rash for weeks. A boyfriend and I had been camping, and I thought it was poison ivy, but it wasn’t responding to any of the normal treatments. Finally I went to health services, who promptly diagnosed me with scabies (they’d apparently had a recent rather significant outbreak). This wouldn’t have been a problem if I could have had time to treat myself/bedding/clothing/etc. But no, this was just before Thanksgiving vacation, and MamaKitty was coming to pick me up the next day. So now I have to make the utterly humiliating call home, asking MamaKitty- who thinks every illness she’s not familiar with is a STD and potentially fatal- to have all the treatment products on hand. I still have nightmares about that phone call, and about MamaKitty and SisterKitty showing up the next day and wrapping me in garbage bags before letting me into the car.
I went through the treatment, through the constant harassment of my family, and the overall icky factor of “there are WHAT in my skin???” Before I went back to school, MamaKitty took me to see her dermatologist. He checked me out thoroughly, asked me what kind of soap I used, what kind of heat source I used in my dorm room, and a few other questions. Then pronounced that I had not had scabies, just extremely dry skin, and that because of my skin coloring/type, the marks left by my scratching looked like scabie trails.
I was very, very angry. ::grumble::
Scabies itches most of the time, seemingly much worse at night when you are trying to sleep. It really is quite an unfortunate thing to have; it makes you quite miserable because the itching at times borders on pain. I had it pretty bad - it started out in the usual places, but spread almost everywhere before I got rid of it. The summer heat at the time didn’t help much, either. :eek:
Nasty little buggers aren’t they? One good characteristic they have, they usually don’t migrate to your head or face, thank God.
I got the little bastards when I was on vacation a few years ago. I came home and the next morning I noticed a few itchy little red spots on my forearm. I didn’t pay much attention to it, I figured it was some kind of rash and I put some Intensive Care lotion on it. Later that night when I tried to get to sleep they were dancing up a storm and itching like all hell. I finally got to sleep, but the next morning there were dozens of little red spots, all up my forearm, some on my belly and side, and a couple on my upper legs. Yikes!!! What the fuck do I have here??? I got online and figured it out, I had the friggin scabies.
Well it just so happened it was Christmas eve. I didn’t want to go to the emergency room at the hospital, and I figured getting a doctor on Christmas day was going to be difficult. So I thought of all kinds of home remedies. I know with chiggers we would put a spot of fingernail polish on the place they were calling home and that seemed to get rid of those bastards. But I had like 100 spots on me now, the fingernail polish routine just wasn’t feasible. I got some soap from the pharmacy that I think you’re supposed to use for lice, that didn’t work. My next idea was to use Off insect repellant. I had a bottle of Off, the lotion kind, and I spread that crap all over my body, it’s really not as bad as it sounds. Next day, scabies gone. I did the Off routine a couple more nights before I went to bed though, just to make sure.
Good luck with your uninvited guests. 
A couple of friends of mine got scabies from sitting in a Greyhound bus taking a trip halfway across the country. I thought it was an STD too when I first heard about it, but since I figured it was pretty unlikely they were schtupping anyone on the bus (or the bus itself), there had to be more to it.
Prior to this thread, I’ve managed to go 23 years without hearing even a whisper about FREAKING BUGS that live UNDER YOUR SKIN – bugs you can catch from other people or FURNITURE! Ahhhh!
Where’s that pukey smiley? Bleh!
Usually
>sigh< “Hey, doc - it says don’t use this around eyes, mouth, or mucus membranes… how the fuck am I supposed to get these little asshole off my face, huh?”
Dry skin makes you more suspectible to scabies.
You can pick them up just about anywhere - my dermatologist related an instance where a man walked under a road overpass everyday, an overpass inhabited by pigeons. Pigeons that, apparently, were very itchy birds that showered little flakes of scabies-infested pigeon dandruff onto those passing below.
Me, I probably picked mine up from where I was working - an outpatient drug clinic. From which, at one time or another, I also brought home strep throat and fleas. At least I managed to escape the tuberculosis floating around.
By the way - I now have a different job.
wow i thought scabies was only something farm animals got, like cows and pigs. now i am worried, is my bacon safe to eat?
I was once diagnosed with scabies.
The stupid college student health service misdiagnosed an allergic reaction to the antibiotic I was taking.
Scabies is a lot more common than most people think. I got it from working at an animal shelter a few years ago. 4 of us got it all at the same time, and I have to say it’s easier to deal with when you have other people to commiserate with you. The itching is bad, but for me the worst part was the massive cleaning required to make sure the things were gone. I washed every sheet, pillowcase, blanket, etc., every article of clothing I had, I rented a carpet cleaner and an upholstery cleaner…it sucked.
What I don’t get is why all these people think it’s an STD. Huh? Sure, having sex with someone who has it will most likely result in an infection, but then sex is a great way for most diseases to be transmitted, regardless of whether or not they’re technically STD’s. Is it just that people assume any disease they’ve never heard of before is sexually transmitted? Why?
For a reall scabies ickfest, check out my link above.
