There’s not a whole lot that I know about my maternal grandfather. He died before I was born, and though I know he was an attorney and judge with a deep desire to be a builder and I possess his cheekbones, there’s not a whole lot of substance to fill in the gaps of what my grandfather was like.
What I do know is that sometime in the gap between WWI and WWII my grandfather was an elementary schooler in Texas and my great-grandparents found him running home from school one day at top speed and in a state of apparent panic.
When they asked him what was wrong, he admitted that he had been running home from school because he “was afraid the germs were going to get him.”
I also know that though we are generations removed from one another, apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I have spent the last week in a state of stress because I’m afraid the scabies are going to get us.
You may remember that I discovered there was an outbreak at the girl’s school last Thursday. I immediately did internet searches about scabies and began to disinfect my house to the best of my ability. On Friday I discovered that, while it wasn’t the little classmate Mia had accused because her voice was funny, it was her closest classmate – the one that she is “baby doll buddies” with. They share dolls, doll pacifiers, and convoluted games of house and make believe on a minute-by-minute basis throughout each day of school.
Criminey.
That little bit of information started yet another round of disinfecting, a side effect was a night’s sleep of less than four hours. I washed every single article of clothing and bedding in our house. I used several cans of Lysol spray on all hard surfaces. On Saturday morning, exhausted and stressed out to the max, I called my parents and turned into a sobbing heap, telling them that I “didn’t think I was going to make it through this scabies thing!”
I called the pediatrician and asked if we could be treated. The doctor on call on Saturday said we had to have a rash to treat.
On Sunday night we discovered a rash on Maggie’s hand. On Monday morning, with yet another load of laundry going in the hot water (I have forced Isaiah to turn up the heat on our hot water heater!) I went to the pediatrician’s office. Our regular physician told me that he didn’t know for sure if her rash was scabies but based on the circumstances, he was willing to treat us all for it.
I was happy. The scabies germ would die.
But then, I was distraught. How would I kill it all over our house without infecting ourselves again?!
Back to the internet I went! (Be advised, you really shouldn’t Google “scabies.” It causes the concern levels to heighten dramatically.) This time I went to the Center for Disease Control website, opened and studied every single link in connection to the subject. From that knowledge I formed the plan of attack.
The treatment for our bodies was to lather ourselves up with a cream for 12 hours – every member of the family had to do it or it would be a completely ineffective treatment. The next challenge was to once again put every cloth item in our house into the laundry, clean and disinfect all hard surfaces, and keep our children from wallowing in the uncleaned areas and contaminating the clean ones in the meantime.
Or... Since the mites can’t survive without human contact, we could leave our house for 72 hours.
The eight-month pregnant, stressed-out, exhausted woman had a preference. Her husband is a wise man.
To Dallas we went!
All along the way I sent myself little encouraging text messages. Things like: “Watch out, mites! I have the planning prowess of Machiavelli and you’re going down!” and “The crusty Norwegians are the ones you really have to watch out for!”
(This last comment makes no sense unless you’ve studied scabies like I have in the past week. Basically there are two kinds of scabies, the kind we were exposed to, which is moderately difficult to spread and then the crusted Norwegian scabies which are EXTREMELY contagious and take over people’s lives. Most of the internet reading I had done originally was on the crusted Norwegians. In light of the recent Winter Olympics I’ve been having a good time imagining the events that a “crusty Norwegian” would win or lose... Hey, I can’t claim it’s been a sane time in my life but these little imaginings have been small beams of sunlight.)
Eventually I stopped sending text messages to myself because I realized that I forgot my phone’s power cord at home and my battery was a-wastin’.
We prepped our children multiple times to follow the plan. Here’s how it went.
We stopped at a store and purchased pajamas and underwear that were in plastic packaging.
We checked into the hotel and went from the hallway immediately into the shower. We stripped our clothes and dumped them into a plastic bag for immediate sealing. We lathered ourselves in the treatment cream, and when I mention we were thorough, WE WERE THOROUGH. (I discovered that while some creases in my body – say my belly button – have completely vanished, there are other creases that have appeared thanks to the baby. Who knew? I’m just praying that by this time next year I’ve found my abdominal muscles again.)
We tiptoed into bed, touching as little as physically possible.
I got up in the wee hours of the morning and invaded the hotel laundry. I washed every cloth item we had with us in the hottest water the hotel could provide and then dried everything under the hottest temperature.
I lost my Croc slippers in this process. Apparently when you cook a pair of Croc slippers for 10 minutes they will shrink approximately two shoe sizes. Not wanting to practice foot binding at this late age of my life, I left the poor shoes in Dallas. I’m missing them terribly.
After that, we asked for a complete linen change in the room and then tried to enjoy our forced 72-hour vacation.
Which we did, with the notable exceptions of the fights over the cell phone usage (the mite dies after 24 hours on a hard surface, 10 minutes in 120 degree or hotter temps, or 72 hours without human contact – you do the math on what that meant for our cell phones). Isaiah and I both had to ‘fess up to an addiction to our little handheld devices.
We went to the zoo, we visited the Trail Dust steakhouse where there is a two-story slide, and we took naps with the girls. It was weird, but it was relaxing.
When we got home this afternoon I felt so happy to just be home again. I’ve already changed and washed all the bedding in the house, along with all the items that we took to Dallas. I view the house with a decent amount of suspicion, but I truly think that we’ve done everything possible to clear our family of this horror.
Isaiah thinks that the timing couldn’t be worse – it plays into my general dislike of germs/disease/stuff as well as my nesting instincts from pregnancy. He may be right - in a conversation with our local Health Department rep I wailed, “I’m set to give birth in seven weeks! Am I just bringing this baby into the world to give her a parasite?!”
No, no one should question my sanity. No, not at all.
Dear God, please let it be over.
Tomorrow we’ll venture with the kids back into school. The daycare is checking every kid every day for any telltale signs – the situation is yucky, but in all honesty, everyone has been SO AWESOME in dealing with it and being proactive.
And that, my friends, is what this deranged gal has been doing for the past week. The kids are great, the husband’s great, my legs are swollen.
But we’re going to make it. Yessiree, we are!
JJ
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