Oakleaf Itch Mite

If that name is new to you, it was to me until a couple of days ago. I read about it in our local paper Thursday morning. I didn't pay much attention to the details, just skimming the article. Well I came home today with two articles about it from the doctor. http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Health/story?id=3487296
and
http://www.cookcountypublichealth.org/staging/PDFs/Insect%20bites%20in%20suburban%20Cook%20County.pdf

Younger son does not have infected mosque to bites or a weird skin disease. Which I am thankful for. He has been bitten many times buy these mites new to our area. The doctor said the are invisible and float in the wind or can fall out of the tree onto you. They are just seeing cases at the doctors office this week. The local hospital for just a couple of weeks. Younger son's are either infected or he is just having an especially bad reaction to them. He is on high dose antibiotics for 10 days, a tropical cream, and Benadrtl every 6 hours. The rash is not contagious and once the mites bite they do not stay on you. So he will itch for 10 days to 14 days and hopefully will not get anymore. Have I said already I can't wait until Fall? I want a good freeze and to be able to have our windows open. That was an other thing. The doctor told us no open windows or doors. Air conditioning only. The mites could blow in with the wind through screens. I think the worst is over. He is still itchy when it is time for more Benadryl, but this is nothing compared to when he fell with his whole body into a stinging nettle bush! That was before I was blogging. They had to get poison control on the line in the emergency room and of course there is not suppose to be any stinging nettle in our part of the country. He was scarred all over his body for a couple of years until it slowly faded away.

Younger son was thrilled today. He watched Disney channel all day since he had to keep his feet up. It couldn't have happened on a better day! High School Musical 2 was finally on tonight and the pre show started at 9am! They played a marathon of the show, "The sweet Life of Zack and Cody" and in between each episode they had The Making of High School Musical 2 on. Then after they played High School Musical 2 they had an other new show on and then played HSM2 again! So he just went to bed singing all the songs. If he's happy, I'm happy.

Older son ran up to the college today and turned in a voucher from his work. Then had softball practice again. Younger son and I will stay home tomorrow instead of going to the softball game since he is suppose to stay off his feet for a day or two to let the swelling go down. He is leery of being outside right now too. This way older son can go out with his friends after the game if he would like.

After the doctors appointment I did some more running around with pictures again. I took older son's pictures today. I usually do a portrait of the kids each year around their birthday. I decided to start doing them myself. They turned out nice, but I did horizontal pictures instead of vertical. By the time I realized it, older son was pretty much done with picture taking :) I will just turn the frame on the wall and rearrange a little. Since the two new frames will be going up I would have had to adjust them anyway. I have all my pictures back now and ran out with one more tonight. I am excited to start putting the frames together! I think I will get off and do that now.