I certainly have been through a nightmare and learning curve these last few months with the itching and skin rash. My symptoms were very similar the posters.
Getting an appointment to see my doctor or any doctor at my surgery has been getting harder and a telephone appointment would not do as someone needed to look at the rashes.
I made the fatal error of going to the pharmacist who immediately made a diagnosis, insisted he was 60% sure ( he was a 100% wrong!) caused me to be horrified and I got an appointment with a doctor at the surgery I have never seen before ( she was Chinese) who merely glanced at the rash, said we go by symptoms ( I itched terribly at night) told her what the pharmacist had said and she prescribed cream form to cover myself in and my partner! and said had I been in any residential homes!!! and had skin contact, the only places I had been and had skin contact in the last eight weeks was the physiotherapist, and the only crowded place was the hospital with OH. We had not been anywhere else except the supermarket and I had been ill over Xmas with that throat and chest virus, she then said scabies, I looked at her in astonishment as I thought that was some medieval disease.
When I got home I googled and wish I hadn't, OH said it was impossible but we will use the cream, we then read the leaflet and found it was an insecticide trade name Permethrin, had to be kept on for 8-12 hours and then washed off and everything in the house had to be cleaned.
That's when the nightmare began my skin reacted and was much worse and became sensitive and I could not beat clothes next to my skin it crawled and I felt pin pricks all over, Oh just got dry itchy patches. I finally got to see my own doctor and she said do not put any more of that cream on, its not scabies, I told her I had made an appointment with a private Dermatologist and she said she would write to him, she also sent me to the hospital for blood tests.
The Dermatologist I saw was very good and said you have not got scabies , you never had and to prove it he gave me a hug and held my hands. He said that I had chronic uticaria and putting that cream on had made my skin even more sensitive, he drew his finger across my chest and it showed up red, he said I was atopic and talked about Mast cells and the release of histamine, I do come from an atopic family and have had Hives a few times in the past and once my eyes swelled up like golf balls when cutting the grass those these episodes only lasted over nigh, nothing like this attack.
He gave me a prescription for skin oil to put in the bath, a steroid cream and anti histamines, it has burned itself out now and I just have a few spots that look like bites.
My own doctor has said she thinks it was delayed reaction and the stress of OH nearly dying last year and I think she is right
http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/content/stress/art2431.html The upshot of all this is that the house is spotless and I have had clean sheets daily for nearly a month after reading about scabies on google, totally unnecessary, but even the thought of it makes me shudder, we even bought a steam cleaner but it is still in its box unopened
The moral of this I suppose is not to rely on a pharmacist to diagnose, I have yet to see him but when I do I will take pleasure in telling him how wrong he was, he even said nonchalantly that it was going around! I will tell him that his mistake cost me over £200 pounds including all the paranoia.
I am not sure about the hormone connection I know that estrogen enhances the immune system and progesterone dampens it, it could be that the loss of progesterone at menopause increases the chances of Allergies.
,
