Yes, I did. When Miss first started school I typed
this post, which I stupidly titled, “Bring on the Ickies” (why would I ever type such a statement?). At the time I was grossed out because I thought she had pink eye, which she actually didn’t have, by the way. I was writing about how I knew she would bring home lots of germs now that she had started school and blah, blah, blah. Yesterday I got a much better sense of the truly icky. Picture it. I wake up at 4 AM to Lass’s crying. It was a “something’s wrong” kind of cry, so I went in to get her thinking maybe she’d had a bad dream or something, and I’d just rock her for a bit. Instead I found that Lass had puked all over herself, her bed, her floor, and then me as soon as I picked her up. Okay. I got it all cleaned up, put both of us in clean jammies, and began rocking her to try to get her back to sleep. Naturally, she puked all over both of us again before I managed to run her to the bathroom and get her over the sink. Again, I get it cleaned up and go back to rocking her. And that’s not even the really icky part…
Rewind about 8 hours to Wednesday night. I had received a text message from a babysitter telling me that her roommate had just found out she has scabies. Oh yes. I thought pink eye was gross? No. No, scabies is gross. Gross as in make-my-skin-crawl-give-me-the-crazy-heebie-jeebies kind of gross. Unfortunately this babysitter had been to my house three times in three days, including Wednesday afternoon for a little while while I took Miss to gymnastics. At first I wasn’t too worried about it, since this babysitter didn’t even know if she actually had it, and I hadn’t seen any signs that my girls did, but still. I did vacuum every room where this babysitter would have been, rugs and furniture. And then as I was sitting there at 4-something AM, rocking Lass again after changing both of our clothes for the second time, I couldn’t help but imagine a little bit what yesterday might have had in store for me. I pictured two puking girls, perhaps being sick myself, and needing to scour and sanitize my house and medicate my girls to get rid of little tiny mites that had burrowed under their skin and gotten into all of our clothing, bedding, furniture, carpets… Perhaps this was a bit melodramatic, but I was sleepy and my mind was wandering on it’s own. And really it wasn’t really too far fetched to imagine that could have been my day.
Amazingly, Lass went back to sleep (though I never did – see thoughts running through my head, above) for a little while and when she woke up she had no additional symptoms of a stomach bug. She kept down everything I gave her to drink and eat and was her cheerful happy self all day long. Miss never got sick, nor did I. Score 1 for Mama!
Unfortunately, I did get a text later in the morning that my babysitter does in fact have scabies. Even more unfortunately, I couldn’t get a doctor’s appointment until 4:30 in the afternoon to find out if my girls or I had it. So, though I tried not to worry about it, I was kind of freaking out that we were infested. There were no real signs that any of us had it, but I started imagining that every little red spot on my girls or any itch I felt myself was a little mite trying to find a home. I started stripping sheets and doing laundry. And then I did the most appropriate and merciful thing yesterday afternoon. I let my girls watch a rare bit of afternoon TV and I called my mom to whine.
TV Glaze
It was quite therapeutic. My mom did what all good moms do. She listened. She sympathized. She made me laugh. What more could a girl ask for (other than having said mom living nearby so she could have come over to help with the laundry, which my mom would have happily done, of course…).
And to make a very long story short, the girls napped, we went to the doctor, and we found out that we do not have scabies. And I learned a lot about scabies that made me feel better all around, like that scabies can’t live long at all in clothing, furniture, etc. That washing every article of clothing and bedding in our house wasn’t really necessary, though I did it anyway. That scabies show up fast and move fast and itch like crazy. In other words, if you have scabies, you know it. Since we didn’t have it and our poor babysitter had not been around for a while, the likelihood that we would get it was nil. Score 2 for Mama!
And, since we did not have scabies, our other babysitter, whom we had scheduled to come over so my hubby and I could get out for dinner, was still happy to come. So we had a nice dinner out and relaxed away the craziness of the day. Score 3!! I am still a little bit shocked when I think about how crummy yesterday could have been and then about how relatively not-so-bad it really was. I feel like I dodged a major bullet!
And to top it all off, since we don’t have scabies and my testimony for this morning got postponed (thankfully, because I wouldn’t have had a babysitter!), we got to go to a much-looked-forward-to play date with some great friends. My friend had a Christmas cookie decorating play date at her house this morning, and it was a blast. Lass mostly just ate a cookie and played in the frosting.
Miss had lots of fun decorating the cookies and eating them. She had a little bit of a hard time though with the idea that she could only eat one of the cookies she decorated and the rest we had to just decorate and save to take home.
Miss made a special cookie for her Daddy.
A good time was had by all. Hooray for no scabies!
Tomorrow we go to my parent’s house for a week. I am so thrilled to spend the week with my Mom and Dad. But, that likely means there will be very little blogging from this girl until we get back, as my parents live in an internet black hole. I’ll be back in about a week!
Thank goodness for no scabies! Holy cow, what a story! I think we picked up the puke flu from school, and unfortunately for us, we ALL got it…all 4 members of our family. It was incredibly miserable. I don’t know a whole lot about scabies, but I’m thinking it’s gotta be either equal to, or worse than the puke flu. Both are miserable and both necessitate an insane amount of laundry! Glad to hear you are all good! Have a blast at your mom’s house!!! I love mommies <3 <3 <3