booboo

So not too long ago we purchased a hot tub off of craigslist and set out to fix it up, clean it up, and got it running….we had been using it nearly every night and enjoying it very much…fast forward to 3 days ago and our friend from high school (my hubby’s ex-girlfriend actually) came to hang out with us in the hot tub…we had a fun time conversing and having an adult beverage…fast forward to 2 days after that and she notifies us that she has lots of red dots on her body…she was freaking out thinking that she had got the fleas from our house and somehow brought them home but she had not seen any…she was barely in our house so we started wondering what was going on…we have now come to the conclusion that we did not have fleas as we thought but had a bacterial infection from the hot tub called pseudomonas aerugonisa folliculitis…it is actually quite common if the chemicals are not kept in close balance…we are assuming that it was established in the hot tub as only my husband and I had been in there multiple times until then…and we had been suffering these “bites”…well the bites are actually the infection but itch like crazy and spread as you itch it…we had been getting into the hot tub nearly every night to “kill” the fleas as hot water kills them so between the showers and hot tub we thought we were taking care of the problem…so back to when we first thought we had fleas…my sister called and said one of her dogs had fleas and she assumed that they could have gotten it at our house…I started cleaning the house trying to prevent it from getting worse.  We hadn’t put our flea meds on the dogs so we had to wash the dogs and then put their flea medication on them…well then 3 days later Kyle and I wake up with what looks like bites…we naturally assumed that we had fleas in our beds as our dogs had been on our bed and linens…so we took off from there cleaning like crazy…we washed all our clothing…we bombed our house…we called in the exterminator….then we were still waking up with lots “bites” (upward of nearly a few hundred)….all along we were beside ourselves how could this be getting worse when we have been trying everything to get rid of these “fleas” and we have yet to see one flea anywhere…there were none on  the dogs, none we were finding on the bed, none we were finding on bedding, in the vacuum bags, etc…so we went online and thought maybe we had what was mice mites as we had one mouse that we were trying to trap…maybe one had died and went to biting us…then came the call from our friend that she was affected…hot water should kill them and she had little contact in the house…so here we are with bacterial infections..good news is if we stay out of the hot tub it will clear up in about 7 to 10 days….we just need to flush the hot tub, clean it thoroughly again, get a new cover, and make sure the chemicals stay in the range…I guess hubby hadn’t been putting in enough or with the bacterial load so high already in it, we couldn’t get enough in there to make up for how often it was used…so all and all I guess this is probably better news…we will heal and our friend will heal and we can fix the problem easily…although we have done a lot suffered a lot that we could do without that I could have lived without…at one time during this ordeal I thought maybe the hot tub could be harboring something but hubby said he was using chemicals, we had cleaned the tub, and it’s super hot water…hot water would kill bugs and chemicals would kill bacteria…or I thought….hubby just needed to watch it more closely with the chemicals…bacteria was the culprit…I should have trusted my instinct that it could be the hot tub…so we have no fleas and hubby and I are recovering…we spent money to buy spray for the entire house–4 bottles…a bottle to spray the yard….a year contract for an exterminator, but we are pretty sure that was needed anyways as we had another mouse show up and we usually kill/poison them and I saw a cockroach for the first time in my life!…so it was needed…and we are okay with that…we have washed a ridiculous amount of sheets and clothing in the past 2 weeks…which having clean sheets and clothing is not a bad thing…just a lot of work…we have also vacuumed a ridiculous amount of times…including vacuuming the bed, couches, and carpets…again are not bad things but a lot of work…when we then thought it may be mights we bought rubbing alcohol and spray bottles to kill them…which was money but it is cheap and can be used…lastly we bought a new bed, of which, is going to be delivered today…and it’s okay…it’s been 4 years since we got a bed and it has a divot where we each sleep and kind of yellowed despite cleaning (even with carpet cleaner)…so we could use it…we got a tempur-pedic cloud which is soft but solid and strong like the tempur-pedic…looking forward to having a new bed…the good thing is we got a very very decent tax return this year which pretty much covered a lot of the things we have purchased….so at least we haven’t gotten financially strapped by this issue we thought we had…so life is getting better and I am happy looking forward…and rather positive about things…now I can start to enjoy my summer…yay so for once…good news even if it’s slightly bad…it’s better than it was…