Mysterious bug under my skin, crawling on my scalp

[HBdadon]

This is my first post, I've been reading this forum for about a month now, reading about evetything from how to cure scabies to mites.

I'm 27 years old, live in Dallas Texas and here is my story...

First, we've always had a fly problem at every house we go to. You know, the little fruit fly looking things. However, we're not big fruit eaters and don't have any out. They seem to love the trash and the sink (different fly?).

Up to 6 months ago I felt like a bug was crawling on me when I sat on my couch and bed (different apartment), our first assumption was bed bugs and we treated the house (using bombs) for these, the crawling feeling slowed but never fully stopped.

We recently moved (2 months ago) and I felt the same thing on the couch and bed, even worse actually. So much so that we had to throw the couch out. The couch had a mattress in it, it ended up staying out back for a little while until one day I looked out there and it had little black bugs crawling all over it. During this time it seemed I ws being attacked at night by whatever this is, constant crawling all over my head. I usually stay up late to work (upwards of 5AM sometimes) and the entire time this crawling is going on. When I get in the bed it's even worse.

Now here we are at present day. Three days ago I started feeling like whatever this was is now in my skin (I'm certain of it), It's under the skin on my face, my scalp, my back, my toes, and my feet. I can feel it crawling in and out of my anus at times also.

Went to the dermatoligist today and of couse he says it's my imagination, some people get it. He's subscribed me some DEXEPIN for depression. :(  Funny thing is I'm not depressed, my life was quite good until this bug showed up.

I can feel them crawling under my skin, they hang out in my ear (not sure if under the skin or just in the canal) all day, it's gross. No one in the house (my wife and 3 kids) can feel them. My wife has bites all up and down her legs and even a protruded ring looking this on her forearm.

As you might have imagined I'm loosing my mind and life, nothing is the same. And now that the doctor says it's my imagination I cant even get my mom or wide (even though she has a lot of bites) to believe what I'm feeling is real. This makes everything 99.9% harder.

At first I thought it was bird mites (lots of trees around our apartment), then I thought scabies (becuase I can see tracks under my skin), and now I'm thinking it's some kind of fly. There are flys everwhere in this apartment. The disposal was broken when we moved in and it had  flies coming out, they are still around even today (and it's broken again). The bathroom has the flies, in fact, there are several dead in the tub.

I spray the tub down with bleach/water after getting out and noticed when I spray the faucet part some of it turns black (black mold?).

Could this be a bot fly? What do I need to do to get rid of it. Now that the dermatologist was no hope (second doc I've seen, first gave me Pemethrin which did not work) I was thinking of ordering some Stromectol / Ivermectin and Green Kleen Green online.

Recently I had jock itch for the first time in my life, had been taking Gris Peg (Griseofulvin) when this all started to intensify. Please if anyone has been through anything like this offer your sound advice.

[Ricobord]

I don't know if anyone in this thread with symptoms is still looking here, but the itching, crawling sensations are called formications.  This is a known symptom of spirochetes, especially syphilis and Lyme /Borreliosis.  

I've read somewhere that most people with Morgellon's disease have many symptoms of Lyme as well, many even testing positive for Lyme and getting better with long term antibiotics.  Because of this, there is a new theory that Morgellon's is a form of Borrelia, or a similar spirochete.

Delusional parasitosis results when someone with formications develops OCD-like reactions to the constant creepy crawly feeling.  Totally understandable, if you ask me.  It's not psychiatric, it is a known symptom of menopause, nerve problems, and spirochete infection (which infect nerves).

[winter12502]

Update from my end....I have collected over dozens of collembola from myh air but they have moved underneath my scalp and into my skin underneath side. The problem is that nobody has heard of collembola and there is no lknown treatment so the dr's instead of helping it is much easier for them to be dismissive and use the DOP slution as a diag.

To all who are experiencing this. Take a white towel and shake or combo ut your hair with a lice comb over it and see if you can collect anything. They are seen with the eye. I do believe this is the part of the itchyness that morgellons sufferers feel they just cant find the bugs. We need to insist on finding a treatment this is a crazy way to live

[racinggranny]

I've been suffering from these bugs since late Aug '10. It's not in your "head", they are real. I've tried Winddex spray, Tea Tree Oil, prescriptions, all kinds of insect OTC sprays to no avail.  I couldn't see these things and in one thread I read of using scotch tape on rectoums to trap pin worms in children at night.  So, I tried using it when I felt these things moving around on my face, eyes, mouth, nose and what I have found, always, beside skin flakes, are small hard dots which appear white. these vary in size so they must be in some sort of stage of their life, egg, larva, etc.  I have had 6 or 8 pest control people to come in and they say they will be back at a certain date and never show up so they don't know what they are either, even with samples. I use lint rollers over my pillows and they pick up little black spots and in using a Jewelers loop, I can see tiny legs and wings.  These aren't bed bugs either. Been to 2 Dermatologists and the usual Pyremthin(sp) is what they prescribe for scabies but whatever it is when you use a med lit that they do take off for a day or two but what or where they are in your home they are back again so the doctors say they can only prescribe this med for a certain length of time and they can't even identify the bug!  Buying as case of Scotch tape, been through 6 rolls and that's the only way, so far, I can get rid of them.

[bugmiteorflea]

Hi all, let me offer the solution that worked for me.

Symptoms : crawling feeling, especially in scalp, around face, ears and every “other” orifice, upper shoulders, arm pits and back, hair-like light sensation on face and "bites" that sting like acupuncture needles. I have never seen anything and shaking my head over the sink only shows tiny black spots that don’t look like any living thing, even under a magnifying glass.

Solution: HEPA Vacuum

History: I got them in December 2008 from a friend whose appt had been fumigated for bed bugs. Although he stayed overnight at my place while they were fumigating, he slept on the couch, not in my bed. A little while later I started to feel the crawling in the middle of the night and assumed he had brought his bed bugs to me.

Also, the “bug activity” would get worse every time I went to his house, even if I just sat on a chair or remained standing for only a few minutes in the hallway. In retrospect I believe they may have been airborne, as suggested earlier in this thread.

The crawling became an infestation. I felt like I had a million of them crawling up my back, under my skin. Then some would “fall” or hop down under my clothes, always vertically. I felt them invade my scalp, around my face, in my ears and in my pubic area. During the day, I felt little or nothing, then in the middle of the night, usually around 4 am, the crawling woke me up, as though there was suddenly an unwanted presence in the room. It was total torture and even shaking my hair over the sink in the morning I could never see anything other than tiny black specs that never looked like anything living, even under a magnifying glass.

This is how I got rid of them: I bought a powerful vacuum cleaner (12Amp Dirt Devil) and in sheer desperation I started vacuuming my body with the hose attachment, everywhere there was hair, even arm pits. I also ran 70% rubbing alcohol straight out of the bottle onto my scalp, and put my day and night clothes in the freezer every night and every morning. Within a couple of weeks I had no more “bugs” and slept fine.

That was January 2009. In December 08, a month earlier, I had gone to visit a friend for Christmas. Because I thought I was hallucinating (since I never saw a bug) I didn’t tell him about any bugs. I slept on the floor just the same and tried to burn the bugs out of my sleep clothes by putting them in the dryer the next morning. He never made any mention to me that he had discovered anything unpleasant since then so I assumed that I had been hallucinating and that I hadn’t brought anything to him.

Having completely forgotten about the bug issue since 09, this last Christmas, December 2011, thus three years later, I went back up to see that same friend and slept in his bed this time (as I had the year before, with no surprises). However this year his bed was infested.  And I was infested once again also, with the same crawling critters. Had I brought them there in 08? Did they hibernate for two years, then went on his two cats, or are these things actually some sort of fleas?

Back at home last month after only two days at his house, I resorted to my old remedies but the attachment dial on my upright Dirt Devil had broken, so it was impossible to vacuum my body as before. So I aimed at freezing the bugs. I put my mattress and box spring and all the bedding outside on the balcony when it was below 0 degrees, I washed and rewashed sleepwear, sheets and covers, but still they were there at night. I even made an alcohol based concoction with lavender, cloves, mint and lemongrass (some sites say to use these essential oils to get rid of mites, including tea tree oil) which I sprayed lavishly on every part of my body and the sheets, but this proved to be only a temporary relief.

Finally I bought another Dirt Devil vacuum, a 10Amp canister vacuum with the ever important pole attachment for cleaning stairs and corners. People, I bought the vacuum on Friday January 27 and proceeded to vacuum every hair follicle on my body and the mattress that day and Saturday, even waking up in the middle of the night (the vacuum is sitting next to my bed, plugged in and ready to go) to vacuum directly the part of my body where I felt the crawling. By Monday morning I woke up totally surprised that I had slept the WHOLE night through for the first time in a month. It’s been more than a week now that I don’t get woken up by bugs crawling during the night. That to me is a cure.

I don’t put my clothes in the freezer anymore, and have put away my alcohol spray. But the vacuum is still my sleeping buddy, because at times I still feel something and vacuum it immediately, anytime. The vacuum is my best friend.

If you choose to try this route, make sure your vacuum has a HEPA filter, and ideally several filter levels. And be careful of breaking capillaries under thin skin and making hickeys because of the sucking power. Also be careful NOT to put vacuum directly to ears as you could break your ear drums.

Hope this helps. All the best.

p.s.
By the way, I do have fruit flies in kitchen because I brought in my compost bin for the winter. That may also have an incidence, as was noted in previous posts.

[BuggedAndFungified]

This blog is a great example of why the internet can be a lifesaver and why I have lost all faith in the medical community at Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse Wisconsin.  Their diagnos has been "go see your anxiety doctor"  and it seems that any "care" they give me, like run a test on my fingernail or x-ray my chest, is not to find out what is wrong with me, but to appease what they perceive as anxiety.  Having had anxiety, perhaps I should be the judge of whether I am anxious or irrate at the frustration I feel when trying to communicate with narrow-minded doctors.  To them, I recommend listening to the song "Liberate" by Disturbed.  On deaf ears fall my ideas on what might be wrong, even with a bachelors degree in molecular and cellular biology.  I really am  clueless as to why they would discount what any patient has to say, the commercials on TV say tell your doctor this, talk to your doctor about this, what the hell for?  So you can be sent away frustrated, angry, and wondering if you really are crazy?  My own self doubt makes me the angriest and is why these blogs are way to maintain sanity.  It seems that if you have an issue in behavioral health, this reduces your chance at a fair shake with physical health.  Anyway, I have been thinking that I have a fungus or bug up my nose that has made its self comfortable in my skin, I was thinking chronic fungal sinusitus, but was told that was controversial.  Oh, I see.  Mayo has a patent on some research and testing methods, so then it all boils down to money?   I even emailed them some of the info on which I was basing my ideas, and still, my efforts were seen as anxiety and not a quest for health and knowledge.  Thanks for starting this blog, I just turned 50, and want to say to any women reading this, DO NOT LET MENOPAUSE be your answer
for every health change you might experience, its what I thought because I remember my mom was itchy and..and...and now she's on an anxiety medication, currently not itching, and she tells me her trick, "when I go in, I say anxiety right away, then they help me, like run a test, to alleviate her distress - to prove her wrong.  I was thinking I may have got "this" either in the bath tub via my ear or nose from an egg/spore in the water, or biking the Root River Bike trail where I usually get a gnat in my eye or nose, or when I wiped out on a wooden bike bridge and had a bleeding open wound that I didn't get a chance to clean up right away, or maybe breathing bad air from a bat infested rental home.  I propose ideas to doctors to help them help me, they see it
as a diagnosis and are offended?   I too have narrowed down cotton products as a possible culprit, more specifically Walmart, Winona Minnesota, seems like domestics (toilet papers, paper towels, and EAR SWABS).  I have been using ear swabs to clean my nose out, dry my ears, and catch the large gleebs of gob that collect in the corner of my eyes.  We have moved and so has it, in the laundry, on the mirrors, its fast, I think I am sweating it.  I have brownish tub ring even if I never left the house and spent the day in bed...and the brownish stuff collects on my reading glasses, moistened by my breath
and face heat to become the whitish liquid stuff that only 409 + vinegar seems to cut....a new development today, i see my boyfriend has something i've seen along the edges of my wounds or scratches, so apparently my sweaty feet on the floor to his sweaty feet?  catching?  I told the doctors, in an effort to get them to move, but in a way that seems like I am not concerned about my own health, that I was a paper carrier, that I touch the doorknobs of many people, mostly elderly that want the "in the door delivery"  and I move, as they recommeded after hearing about the condition of the house, and now, another rental house tainte?.  All because ...because...(M.D. (mentally deficient),,,,N.P. (Ninkom Poop)....To all medical personnel with narrow minds or the inability to listen, I say to you a twist I made on a Jerry Seinfeld joke.

"Shouldn't you be laying at the bottom of a ledge somewhere?"  (as opposed to "Shouldn't you be standing out on a ledge somewhere?)

Or  maybe I say and ask, not threaten, "Am I so crazy, so anxious that you would be willing to apply my perfectly normal spittal in which I imagine bugs or fungus to an open wound on your own body?   Am I so crazy and anxious that you would be willing to do your laundry at my house?  And then take it home to your kids and have them wear those clothes?  To my ex-slumlords,
"Would you let your grand kids rent this place?"  To the researchers,  I say, "I have notes and pictures and would be willing to be sick a little longer in  the name of education and science."  

[HBdadon]

Colemboella (spelling may be wrong), it is that, that's what this entire sh*t is, or at least a major part. I will look into that spray, never heard of it. Damn wars.