Another update from this summer is not as pleasant but wanted to share in case anyone else experiences the lovely chigger. When Vegkid came home from camp in the mountains, his legs looked like this...
(sorry for the gross pics) Actually these pictures are from day 5. You do NOT want to know what he looked like when we picked him up.
And the backs not much better:
The rest of his body had other kinds of bumps, like poison ivy, mosquito bites, etc. I knew that because I used all my natural remedies to clear them up and they were all gone in a day or two.
But his legs... OH MY WORD!!! That stuff was persistent and seemed like it kept getting worse. Nothing, not even Tea Tree would make that go away. I heard of chiggers, but had never seen their reaction.
Well being a responsible parent, I decided to take Veg to the Doc before getting him around any other children, just in case this was something contagious.
Doc confirmed it was chiggers and not contagious. He also confirmed that they don't spread, but that reactions can take up to 3 days to appear. So likely the new bites were showing up from each of the three days prior. OK, that made sense. But what now?
He basically said to treat the itching (which we already had, even as bad as it looked, he wasn't itching) and to treat any infection. He sent us home with Antibiotic prescription. Veg did NOT want to take medicine as much as I did NOT want to give it to him.
I told Veg to give me 24hrs. I was ready to try the Garlic.. Bring out the big guns!!! If we couldn't see improvement, we'd have to get the antibiotic.
Sooooooooooo.... I rubbed ear oil.. yes EAR OIL... Garlic, Willow Bark Ear OIl:
All over his legs while he slept. In the morning when he woke up, ALLLLL the redness was gone. And the really bad spot, looked 1000 times better.
We decided not to fill the prescription and rubbed the Garlic oil on his legs a couple times a day for a few days.
And that was that! Who would have thunk it??
So we learned a lot this summer, and one great thing we learned was that Garlic ear oil, stopped a chigger rash and infection within a couple days.
I LOVE that stuff!