How 'bout pinworms in your vagina? Yes sports fans, it happened to her:
One night during a movie with my husband, I noticed an itchy feeling... you know down there. I thought, “Great yeast infection.” UGH! It’s never-ending with this vagina of mine, if I had any sense at all I'd get rid of the damned thing! The itching did not come back until a week or so later. I finally just chalked it up to being the start up of a yeast infection, or maybe showering every other day really wasn't enough? I started showering daily.
5am, I was tossing and turning with a relentless itch. This time I was sure that nagging yeast infection was back. I went about my lady business in the bathroom. Only when I wiped I saw a single white worm on the toilet paper!
I slammed on the lights, changed my clothes and I was ready to go to the ER. I was infected, something was horribly wrong with my body. In my panic, I accidentally woke my husband. I was beyond humiliated to tell him about what I found. He tried comforting me, but when you find a worm anywhere on you, there is no comforting.*
The kids were asleep so I decided to check them. I really felt more like a creep than a concerned mother. “It's OK sweetie, I am just checking your butt for worms while you are asleep.”
Yes, they had them. (Insert more sobbing hysterically here, along with the pain of being the worst mum ever, and fearing CPS was on their way to confiscate my kids.) I immediately woke each and every one of them up, and showered them with hot water (as hot as they could stand it) and Dial soap. They were pretty upset, but they were clean.
I decided to Google Pinworms, also known as thread worms. According to the Internet, they are very common in the U.S. It’s estimated that 1/3 of the American population is infected with this parasite at any given time. The kicker… They are very common with school-aged children.
Huh, you don't say. I have a kindergartner, a first grader, an almost 3 year old, and a 4 year old. Their life cycle starts with itching of the anus, and somehow ingesting these lovely parasites' microscopic eggs. When one person in a family has it, everyone in the family must be treated.
I could think of a million places we could have gotten this thing from. Pinworms are common in places where there are children or a large group of people, schools, parks, library, McDonalds, outside digging in the dirt, maybe our dog, etc.
Childhood diseases are a rarity in our house...knock on wood...except for those brought in when S1 and S2 visit, as they are public-schooled. Count pinworms as another of the myriad social diseases obtained from compulsory public schooling and /or inadequate domestic hygiene (viz "starting showering daily", above--gross).
Image courtesy of the internet. Word to the wise, be careful when googling "pinworms" with SafeSearch off. Yowza. Let's just say that biology is never neat, clean, or attractive.
* I wonder if this fellows' first reaction...other than to make sure his wife's airway, breathing, and circulation are patent--"oh, you're standing up, rating and crying about worms in your vaj...you're good"--was to exclaim, using his inner monologue, to be sure: "holy crap! My penis was in there?" And then proceed to give himself the Karen Silkwood treatment.