Job Discussion Forums

[drdo]

We arrived in Feb. of this year, and by April, we were itching like crazy. We've gone to several regular docs and then to a specialist (skin doctor) in Chiba. No medicine or ointment they have offered has relieved us. Initially, they said it was "mites" but now, they don't know (symptoms are rather unusual).

My child is 2.5 yrs old and has scratched herself so much that little dark, spots are under her arm, on her thigh, foot, leg, etc. My husband and I too have little, red rash-type marks all over us, and I have many of the dark brown welts (a bit bigger than a mosquito bump) like our child (about 30 on my stomach, thighs, buttocks and back). Details...

We have changed laundry soap, used no scent deodorant, soap and shampoo. We have washed our linen and sheets, even took them all to a coin laundry to have HOT-HOT water, we have pounded our futon, vacuumed everywhere, but still (especially at night) we have incessant itching, welts, rash and a type of psoriasis--but not.

DOES ANYONE have a recommendation, of a doctor in Tokyo (foreigner hopefully, as we are getting nowhere with national docs). Or do you know an amazingly gifted dermatalogist? Or do you know of some homeopathic cure? Advice?

Thank you
DRDO

[guest of Japan]

There are really top quality, fluent English speaking doctors at Sanno Hospital near Roppongi.

The telephone number is: 03 (3402) 3151

The website is: http://www.sannoclc.or.jp

You can e-mail them at: [email protected]

I'm certainly no doctor, but it seems to me that if everyone in your family is suffering the same problem then it is probably not an allergic reaction to any soaps or detergents. I would guess that you tatami or futons are infested with some little critters.

I hope you and your family feel better soon.

[drdo]

Thanks! I checked into Sanno Hospital's web site.

About the futon: we bought them new in Feb., could they "still" be infested after such a short time? We wondered about mites and were told to vacuum our futon as well as pound it in the sun. We don't have any tatami in our place.

DRDO

[guest of Japan]

I honestly don't know.

[Revenant]

Its unlikely the infestation is from your futon(s). I suspect its from your apartment building. How old is your building?

Have you spoken with your landlord over the problem?

Even if your apartment is professionally fumigated, they infestation may simply move to a neighbor's apartment and when they fumigate, they'll hop on back over to yours. I've seen roaches do this with tenants in a mall's food court and it required the entire place to be fumigated.

To avoid the problem, you might even have to move. But if you do so, make sure all of your belongings are fumigated well to prevent your shipping the problem to your new place.

Vacuuming doesn't get rid of infestations, btw. Do you know if any of your neighbors in your building have tatami or put in new tatami? You could be getting a spillover from them.

Some people say old mats cause this... and in some types of infestations this is true but more frequently, the causes is from new tatami.

Another consideration is that you could have bath water that is contaminated in some form or manner. It also could be some sort of air pollution in that area as well.


I really feel for you about these problems and you must all be very miserable.

[drdo]

Wow! I never thought of much of what you said--before this email. I think the building is one of the newer ones (like in the past 10 years) but I'll ak. There is a string of them along this street but our complex has 4. The people downstairs just moved (early July). The ones directly below us and the ones acoss from us are quiet, harly see them. But, I will have my husband ask both the landlord and the neighbors. (He speaks the language far better than I).

The family across the street doesn't have any probelms, but those apartments are with another rental company and they have wooden floors downstairs and carpet up. We have carpet in both our bedroom and livingroom and our kitchen, bath and front entry is that fake wood-looking stuff.

The water...wow! We were given some "onsen" type solution from the docs to put in our baths. We went to the doc again yesterday (all 3 of us). They decided we "didn't" have mites (they took part of our child's skins on her foot and look in the microscope, looking for mites or scabies. Nothing--so they just looked at us. My mosquito-type welts are a mystery to them, especially since our child has them as well.

We are miserable! Heath probelms was NOT one of the issues we thought we'd encounter (to this degree) in Japan. The night itching is a 9 on a scale of 1--to--10. Watching our child "go at it" while sleeping is painful to watch. The soft skin reddens so easily on a child.

Okay enough! We will seek another clinic, another doctor for more concrete answers. Thanks for your interesting ideas. We are open to check into anything!

DRDO

[J.]

Gee, your family's situation sounds like a nightmare. So sorry to hear about it. I don't have many ideas about the source of the problem but try a product called "Una Cool" to calm down the bites/welts and stop the itching. You can get it in any drugstore or big supermarket. You can dab it on the problem areas and it numbs and cools everything down.

Also, try a forum called "Skincell"; you can get it in a google search. It's for all manner of skin complaints and you can post a query on there; maybe someone will have some more ideas for you.

It sure sucks that you have been suffering for awhile and the doctors can't help. I wonder if there could be something in your carpets? Also if you have everything new in your building it could be outgassing a lot of formaldehyde and other chemicals so you should try to get fresh air in there and you could get some houseplants; they actually purify the air and give off oxygen.

Good luck!

[J.]

Just thought of one more thing...fleas. If they get in the carpets though pets or even coming in on a person, they can stay there for months. You can tell the bites because they usually happen in a kind of row or trail pattern and they are fiercely itchy. They usually look like welts too.

[drdo]

Pets...no none.

But how this all first started is my husband came over first (Jan 05) and stayed with a friend for the month. We arrived in Feb. He had already found a place for us, bought our new futons and bedding. By the time we got there he was going nuts--scratching and itching (so was his house mate--who was scratching before my husband showed up). The buddy has no pets either but he has a ton of friends that stay over at his place. (His family live there too but they are away for 6 months of the year).

They both had gone to his doctor and had ointment and medicine, so I assumed it would "go away-sson enough". Then, our child got the itch in late March and I didn't show any signs until early May. Now, I have it the worse. But it does go in spurts, it seems...there are moments where the itch is intolerable, keeps us from sleep and fairly irritable with each other.

We are trying to keep cool as sweat doesn't help with the rash and itching. We wear cotton and take lukewarm-cool baths. We wonder if onsen powder would help or even go to one, but we'd hate to "pass this on--to anyone"!

I will try the products you suggest. We went online and believe it or not, Vaseline was suggested. Thanks for your help!

[J.]

Here's an url for a google search page with some pictures and a lot of results. You can click on the first link under the pictures for a fuller explanation.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=scabies&btnG=Google+Search&meta=


Good luck.

[drdo]

Fantastic!
I have been on that site for the past 2 hours, checking into each link and finding out a lot of information! My printer is exhausted!
Thanks!