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From the "One Damn Thing After Another" File... (Warning: Gross)

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  • From the "One Damn Thing After Another" File... (Warning: Gross)

    My health has been in the toilet ever since my boyfriend and I returned from our jaunt to the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia late last month.

    As near as the doctors can figure out, that trip is what set things off due to a combination of things -- walking everywhere for 9 straight days, sweating a lot, and an increase of sugar in my diet due to the fact that there is nothing available up there to drink that isn't either sugary or sweetened with aspartame, which I cannot stomach. Add it all up and what do you get?

    A yeast infection. And let me tell you now, a yeast infection on a man is an ugly thing indeed, involving welts, indescribable itching, and -- this is the fun part -- big yellow, pillowy blisters the size of nickels.

    I went to the doctor for this and got a cream. For a week it seemed to be working and then it stopped, and the blisters came back in force.

    I went to the doctor and got an antifungal pill to take once a week for four weeks. I took the first pill and the infection died down, only to come back by the end of the week, just in time for the second dose. It died down again, and the third dose is due on Monday morning, and guess what's back as of the last time I went to take a whizz! Correct -- more blisters.

    Meanwhile, about four days after we got back, I woke up feeling crummy. Malaise turned into a sore throat, and then into a cough, which is still lingering almost three weeks later. I'm of the mind that it's percussis, which I've had before and which the doctor told me would go away when it went away and not a moment before. It dragged on for at least a month, as I recall.

    And guess what I was diagnosed with this morning... Scabies! What fun! Had to go back to the doctor for an entirely new and exciting rash, different from the one I'd had since October. We're thinking that my boyfriend picked it up from a patient at the hospital where he works. He's never had scabies before, and if you've never had it before, it can take up to ten weeks for symptoms to show up. If you have had it before, it will take about a week, which is why those symptoms are etched loud and clear across my thighs, while he's still asymptomatic. This means, of course, that all our clothing, towels, and bed linens will have to be washed in hot water, and we'll have to vacuum the hell out of our apartment, although I'm not sure what to do about our sofa. Hopefully we can get by without having to do anything drastic to the leather armchair or the leather computer chair.

    But yeah... one fucking thing after another.
    Last edited by Antisocial_Worker; 11-19-2011, 02:59 AM.
    Drive it like it's a county car.

  • #2
    Pardon the threadjack and the TMI. I gave a guy a yeast infection once because we had sex while I was on my period.

    Unfortunately, the guy was a total pricked, panicked that I "gave him something", went to the doc and got some medication for it, but still went around and told everyone about it. Yeah, not fun.
    You really need to see a neurologist. - Wagegoth

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    • #3
      For the leather, try Lysol spray and let it dry on it.

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      • #4
        Geez! Yeast infections suck so hard. My sympathies.

        TMI: I used to get them a lot when I was young.
        Driver Picks the Music, Shotgun Shuts His Cakehole.
        Supernatural 9-13-05 to forever

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        • #5
          Quoth dragon_wings View Post
          Geez! Yeast infections suck so hard. My sympathies.

          TMI: I used to get them a lot when I was young.
          What may be worst of all is that the antifungal I'm on... I may have been put on the wrong dosage. My boyfriend thought it odd that I'm only supposed to take one dose a week and he got to looking into it in his drug manuals. None of them say anything about taking it once a week. Most of them say to take it daily for a week. He asked a doctor at work about it tonight too and the doctor had also never heard of taking it once a week.

          Meanwhile, thanks to everyone for commiserating. Does anyone have any cleaning suggestions for the scabies?
          Drive it like it's a county car.

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          • #6
            Not a nurse, but I agree with your boyfriend that a once weekly anti-fungal is weird.

            Not to pry but is your doc a specialist in your chronic disease? Immunosuppressed patients get weird diseases and they show up in weird ways. That might also be why you're on a once weekly dose of anti-fungals, but that still seems really weird to me and I'd totally question it. If anything, I'd expect a higher dose.

            As far as getting rid of scabies, wash EVERYTHING in hot water and dry on hot heat. If it's water safe, it goes in the washer, including things like area rugs or a slipcover from a couch. If you have a pet, they can get scabies too, so see a vet. The drug in the cream is permethrin, and I'm fairly certain you can get it in hardcore insect repellants (maybe somewhere like REI will have it this time of year) or in flea treatments (check the pet store). Use that on anything too big to fit in your washer.
            I hope your boyfriend is using the cream already, because you don't want him to continue carrying the bugs, making you do the whole thing all over again.

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            • #7
              As for scabies, I know a good bit about what supposedly deters/kills 'em. Why? We had a possible Scabies scare, so we did it just in case. Thankfully it wasn't the case, but prevention is always good.

              1) Apparently the stuff that causes Scabies hates Tea Tree Oil. That would probably be a good thing to use if you feel like using some 'oomph'.

              2) Borax on the carpets is pretty helpful. If the critters get on the carpet, if they swallow Borax, it will swell up in their stomach and kill them.

              3) For extra effectiveness, you can also sprinkle a tiny bit of Boric Acid into the mix on the carpet. That's pretty much instant death, but make sure to wear socks or something on your feet for a little bit; even if it's weak, acid still hurts on the skin! I learned that the hard way...

              Best of luck! I hope it doesn't stay too long, I'm sure it's pretty damn painful.
              My only regret is that I don't have a better word for "F@#k You".

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              • #8
                Thanks for your suggestions, everyone.

                Boyfriend has been talking to doctors at work, and none of them are willing to prescribe him any of the scabies lotion. Some docs are known for being more accommodating when it comes to that kind of thing, and we're hoping that one will be there tonight. If not, we'll have no choice but to try to make one tube do it for us both. There is supposed to be enough in the tube to treat two adults, but I'd feel much better if we both had our own supply.
                Drive it like it's a county car.

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                • #9
                  also it may seem odd but if you can get your hands on some California baby non-talc powder it may help with the yeast infection. My son had diaper rash bad enough that the doctor gave him prescription cream, it did nothing, the california baby cleared it up within two days. Yeast can't grow when kaolin clay is depriving it of moisture, and lavender is a natural anti-fungal.
                  Honestly.... the image of that in my head made me go "AWESOME!"..... and then I remembered I am terribly strange.-Red dazes

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                  • #10
                    Today was the day we fought back.

                    This morning at 9am we smeared ourselves from our necks to the soles of our feet with a 5% permethrin cream and then we proceeded to leave it on for the maximum allowed 14 hours. For some of that time we slept, but we didn't change our sheets on the theory that anything living in the sheets would no longer be living by the time we got done thrashing around as we slept, thanks to the lotion smearing off on the sheets.

                    This evening we got up and went shopping, buying a box of Borax, some Delsym for my cough, and a tea tree oil and rosemary extract body wash. When we got home we washed our comfortor, then our sheets and mattress pad, and when that's done drying, the pillows and towels are next. While we washed, we sprinkled the carpet throughout the apartment with Borax, and we did the same with the couch and our mattress. Then we vacuumed the everliving hell out of the whole lot of them. We used a cunning little vacuum attachment for the mattress and couch that looks just like a paw.

                    The only possible slip up came when the vacuum overheated and I took it outside to try to unclog it. I already had it open before I remembered that the dust was full of scabies. Then again, it was also full of Borax, and hopefully that had already killed the little shits. Either way, I was still lotioned up... except for my hands, which I had washed in order to eat dinner beforehand.

                    After we vacuumed, we both took showers with the tea tree oil body wash, using new bath poofs that we'd picked up on our shopping trip.

                    And that's that. Now we wait and see if it was all effective. I certainly hope so -- washing everything in hot water, banishing everything that couldn't be washed to the spare bedroom to sit for a couple of weeks until the little buggers starve, blasting the carpet and mattress and couch with Borax... It was a full-on assault.
                    Drive it like it's a county car.

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