Last Tuesday, Mr. Pants saw the doctor for his pre-school checkup. He had three shots, including Chicken Pox, and we went on our merry way (his way got much merrier when he was promised a treat at the grocery store).
Wednesday night, he started scratching his elbows and complaining that he itched. All I could see were some perplexing little white dots. Thinking it would at least be a useful placebo, I put the anti-itch stuff on them and he eventually went to sleep.
Thursday, he was scratching.
By Friday night, he was scratching and complaining miserably and the few little white dots had become a patch of countless tiny red bumps all over his elbows and knees, and a few trailing down to his wrists.
On Saturday, we went back to the doctor.
"I know it's too early for it to be from the Chicken Pox vaccine," I said (the nurse had said a rash was rare, but might turn up two weeks after the shot), "But that's the only thing I can think of, except for maybe chiggers?" (We'd heard there are chiggers here, but I have no personal experience with them.)
As far as a reaction to the vaccine, the doctor said it would be "unusual" but "there are no certainties in medicine," or something like that.
As far as chiggers, he shook his head, dismissing the idea entirely, "Not chiggers; they would go for the underwear line. And there's too many of them." Meaning the bumps. Too many bumps to be chiggers.
Doctor declared it was most likely a strange presentation of Hand Foot and Mouth disease (strange presentation because it shouldn't be itchy and the rash should be… on the hands, feet, and mouth), and for the itch prescribed either Benadryl or Zyrtec because, "The downside of Benadryl is it can make him sleepy."
I looked at the doctor consideringly and said cautiously, "Sleepy sounds… good."
(Thankfully, we've never tried Benadryl for plane trips because while it "may cause drowsiness" it also "may cause excitability, especially in children". Guess which one we got? But he has to have the Benadryl to sleep at all, because the itch is so bad. I had to wash the sheets yesterday because they were all spotty with blood. Basically, we give him the Benadryl and then he flails around and generally drives us crazy for an hour or so, until he conks out upside down in the bed or wherever he happened to end up.)
So, for about 24 hours, we waited and hoped this would be a mild case of Hand Foot Mouth and that no one else would get it (I hear it's pretty miserable for adults).
Sunday evening, Mr. Pants was in a mood and ran out the door while I was making the sandwich he'd asked for for dinner.
He came back in quickly enough, as soon as I set the sandwich on the table and yelled for him, but as he started working to kick his shoes off (who wants to bend down to deal with shoes when you can spend twice as long doing it the hard way?) he suddenly said, "What's that stuff on my legs?"
I glanced over. It looked like his legs were covered in dirt. Like fine mud splatters. But there's no mud anywhere near the house.
So I looked closer. The dots, hundreds of tiny dots, were moving. Fast.
I looked even closer. The tiny little dots had tiny little legs. Tiny little legs moving very very fast.
I ordered him into the bathroom, stripped him down and dumped him in the tub for a good soapy scrub (this would probably be the instinctive response, but I actually had read up on chiggers a few weeks ago, as soon as they were mentioned, and a soapy scrub is the highly recommended solution immediately after exposure).
When I was finally convinced no tiny legged creature remained on his delectably soft skin, I got him out of the tub and picked up his clothes to toss them in the laundry.
Now, normally, I hate white tile bathroom floors because they are never clean enough to look clean, no matter what you do. But — score one for white tile floors! — on any other surface, I would never have seen the hidden swarm of minute creatures that lay in wait under that heap of clothes.
Mr. Pants was told not to move, Schmoogie was repeatedly barred from entering the bathroom (this angered her), the clothes went directly into the washing machine, and I set about scrubbing the infernal little nasties off the floor. Vigorously scrubbing. Scrubbing fueled by the psychosomatic crawly itchy feeling I could no longer repress.
I'm still not absolutely positive they were chiggers (though they looked quite like the picture on the Internet, just not noticeably red) or that that's what the original rash was, but it's a damn good hypothesis. Especially since he'd run outside and "hidden" in exactly the same spot (next to the air-conditioning unit; chiggers like it hot) the day of the mysterious first rash.
So there you go, the day I met chiggers. And, let me tell you, I hates me some chiggers.