Not to tell friend we have Scabies

[Lovemenorca]

Children and I visited a lovely close friend last week.

This friend and I are very different. She’s yoga teacher, very very green focussed, huge amount of animals an exceptionally relaxed approach to parenting and cleanliness (only relating to household cleaning and hair washing. Teeth brushing and showering daily)

Whereas I am an uptight, strict, ridiculously house proud financial services professional!

She is an incredibly kind loving fun generous person. Honestly, I can’t begin to tell you how supportive she is. Never a bad word to say about anyone. She is a treasure

We have just got back from visiting last week and soon after leaving mad itching started. Truly unbelievable. Then the lumps appeared. Neck, elbows. Awful. the doc today has said it’s not nits. It’s scabies!
My precious day off with the children has been spent entirely treating and washing absolutely everything in sight.

No doubt about it - we caught it when staying. However I don’t know whether to tell her. She is a very sensitive soul and would be devastated to think she’s put me out.

She’s not going to actually change no matter what I tell her. The house, cleanliness standards, animals etc will all be the same, as this is who she is. So I wonder whether worth telling her or just keeping quiet but then not staying over again (it is only a once a year event in any event)

Hmmm is the gp sure? If lots of animals it could just be an awful flea infestation and they do go for some people more than others so they might not be as affected as your family.

when I had it the furrows were visible on fingers and wrist with a magnifying glass.

I would also be wary of the Doctor’s diagnosis. I was told by the GP that Scabies is a notifiable condition. As I worked in a school I informed the Deputy Head, which was embarrassing. When the problem didn’t clear up I saw a Dermatologist, who diagnosed a completely different condition & said I had not had scabies.

@DemelzaandRoss

Why did you have?!

Oh god! I caught scabies from a child at school who had a known case. On the top of my foot. I thought it was a mosquito bite at first but the itching! It moved on to the sole by my toes. I got myself treated, and the whole family just in case. It took months before I was happy to say it had gone. None of the rest of the family caught it. There were tracks across the skin of my foot where it had burrowed along. The most horrible thing. I’m itchy writing this. I started itching about 3 weeks into the summer holiday, so at least 3 weeks after contact with said child.

Good luck, OP.

I was also told I had scabies and treated the whole family. Turned out to be another skin condition.

It’s hard to diagnose and a lot of research has been done into this as it is notoriously difficult.
It really isn’t easy and isn’t always classical so cases of scabies often don’t look like the textbook cases. GPs will treat it if they suspect it, as they treatment works and it is very very contagious and can become much harder to treat if ignored.
But it can easily be missed too as it can look like and present like so many other common skin conditions.

I had scabies once, it is mainly very itchy at night and I don’t think you get it from the neck up just the body and the spots are quite small iirc

Any chance it could be bed bugs bites?

These are hard to tell apart.

My condition was Discoid Eczema. Extremely itchy.