My nightmare

My nightmare started in May 2016, without going too much into details it was a party, a spiked drink and a guy, the rest you can imagine because honestly I don't remember much. 2 days after that a visit to the OB/GYN with an infection, tests, all negative, meds for infection for one week and that was it. Like that never happened, or that is what I thought at that moment. I became a loner after that. I started going out less, stopped talking to my friends, family. The only people I talked to and see was my next door neighbor and my ex boyfriend. In June I started seeing small dots in my bed, white, black and brown, the size of a single grain of salt, also started seeing black insects like worms but tiny, let's say 1 or 2mm. For someone who is afraid of insects you can imagine how I was, hysterical!!! I started having panic attacks and because of the attacks I was seeing more than it was. The only 2 people I trusted never saw anything and they convinced me that everything was in my head. I started saying to myself every time I saw an insect "it's all in your head, you are hallucinating because you have a panic attack" closed my eyes for 3-5 minutes and everything was normal again. No bugs at sight. In one of those panic attacks I thought it was bedbugs and soaked my mattress with alcohol to kill them, fumigated the house, bought new pillows and got a mattress cover, problem solved. In July I went to the doctor with white spots on my tongue and basically all over my mouth. Diagnosis Thrush, one week of meds, came back to the doctor after one week still with Thrush. Got meds for 2 weeks and after 3 weeks I was able to eat and speak without pain again. In August the panic attacks were getting stronger. I was convinced that the neighbor cat had left fleas in my house and somehow they got into my head. I fumigated the house again and started using lice shampoo once a week, added tea tree oil to my regular shampoo, conditioner, body lotion and even the washing machine when I was doing the laundry. Most of my day was spent in the bathroom washing my hair and body at least 5 times with different products. At that moment I was still trying to convince my friends that the bugs were real and they were trying to convince me that they were not. By September half of my day was spent in the bathroom. One quarter working and the other quarter sleeping. Every day was getting more difficult to sleep and I was having headaches all the time. Eating was getting more difficult, my teeth were hurting to chew and my throat to swallow. At that point I was only going out of the house if it was completely necessary. In October again to the doctor, this time with pink eye. Got the meds that were supposed to be for 5 days but it took 10 for it to go away. Told the doctor about the bugs but he didn't saw anything wrong. In November I moved, convinced that the house was the source of all my problems. Everything was going well and I stopped obsessing on the bugs. I was washing my hair and body as normal people do, until one day that I felt something moving in my head. In a panic attack I cut my hair and I saw white things in the hair I cut. Went to another doctor, took the hair with me and her diagnosis were nits, no lice, just nits. The obsession and the panic attacks came back, I lost the track of time and by that time I was hardly getting 5 hours sleep a day in episodes and dyed my hair in a desperate attempt to kill them. December was basically the same, one doctor per week, every doctor with a different treatment and diagnoses. Each and every one of them wrong. I started looking at internet and found what I had, but the doctors just didn't believed in me. I was actually called crazy by a couple of doctors and at the middle of January I was hardly getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a day. Even when I was taking sleeping pills. I decided to bleach my hair to kill the bugs, and because I was going to do that I decided to go blue. So I bleached my hair how I could, I applied the blue, waited the time it said and got in the shower. When I was done I started brushing my hair and when I looked in the mirror I saw them. They were all blue. I got a panic attack and honestly the first thing that crossed my mind was the sleeping pills. I had 2 bottles new and a third half, that would be enough to sleep and not wake up again. I was in so much pain, physically and mentally, I could barely eat, I could barely sleep and my life wasn't living anymore, it was just surviving. I got the meds in front of me, I was crying like a kid and I wanted to do it. I just wanted everything to be over. I didn't wanted to suffer anymore. I was really tired, walking hurt, touching things hurt, eating and drinking hurt. Even breathing hurt. I took one bottle of pills, opened it and at that moment my phone beeped. I got a message and that message saved my life. I don't remember who it was because I didn't even saw it. I took the phone and called my ex-husband. As soon as he heard I was crying he got in to the car. He talked to me all the way to my house. He came and tried to calm me down and then he saw the bugs. He took me to the doctor, a Dermatologist. She believed in me, she examined me and showed me the bugs in the microscope. It was pubic lice, all over my body. You know every time I went to the doctor they treated my symptom as a disease. They never saw the big picture and because there is not much information about them family practitioners don't really know how to treat them or even recognize them because most of the time they are translucid. They only get darker after they eat. Everyone knows that they can be as big as the head of a pin but they can also be really small. They can get inside of the pores and hide in there. They don't need to go out because they eat in there so is unlikely for us to see them. Not everyone gets itchy, some of us only get headaches, fever from time to time and sometimes an allergic reaction that makes the skin red. Hypersensitivity to the point that touching anything hurts and even burns and finally closes your throat and air ways, some people doesn't even get that. They just live a long time with them without noticing they have them and obviously spreading them to every person they have close contact with. You don't need to have sex to get them. You just need to be really close to a person that has them, use their clothes or sleep in the same bed. Shaving it's not enough and regular lice treatments don't work. If you think you might have them go to a dermatologist. They are the only ones that can help. At the end I wasn't crazy, my body was telling me that something was wrong even when the doctors were telling me it wasn't. I got the treatment for 15 days and now I'm completely free of bugs. I'm taking medication for panic attacks and still can't go in to crowded places. I started going out to the store and things like that, I'm getting my life back step by step, I ended up losing 60 pounds and up until today I got back 20. I'm trying to see a positive side, at least I lost weight! Know your body, examine yourself once a month or even once a week if you feel like it. Trust your instincts and if you feel something is wrong most of the time it's because it is. Listen to your body, memorize every inch of it, some day that might save your life.