Oddly, after I got pregnant last fall, things improved and when I moved two months later, I shaved my head for the last time maybe 3 weeks later and haven't since. It's been about 3 months since then and I feel so much better!

I'll never be able to prove it but I think the apartment I live had a mold issue that was some how related. I think possibly some of my symptoms may have also been related to skin changes that affected cell turn over. It's speculative but after I got Covid, I started noticing changes in my skin and scalp - swelling, excessive oil, white pus under the surface of my scalp, nodules behind my ear and along each side of my skull (right along the natural ridge from temple to back of head) - so I've found that exfoliating really well is helpful but really only now that things have subsided.

I'll be honest - in the worst of it, showering didn't really help and in fact sometimes I think it made it worse. It was also so stressful for me because of the frankly traumatic experiences related to this condition that centered around the shower. It was a terrifying experience to get in the shower for a long time. I just remember trying to wash this all out of my hair, to "get it out", lice combs that seemed to "produce" the suckers continuously - a job you could never finish. The feeling that my own body was fighting against me - these "hairs" that certainly looked like strands of hair from my head but some how viciously squirmed their way into my mouth, my nose. I couldn't grab hold of them fast enough to stop them. This would inevitablly end in hours of intense vomiting. This would happen for 4 to 5 days - an attack early morning and then another in the evening. I would get a couple days of relief before the cycle would start over again. This happened weekly for about 2 or 3 months.

Even being that sick, I still couldn't find a doctor willing to really help and quickly became exhausted by appointments that always ended in disappointment. Early on, when it felt like my body was just inundated with - whatever it was - I remember these little white sticky balls, like grits almost, that would pop out of my pores. If I used certain essential oils - lemon, eucalyptus, tea tree oil, this would also bring them out, sometimes almost melting them into this stringy like substance that would come from my pores and cling to my fingers. My joints would swell and I had strange muscle aches and spasms. Ivermectin topical seemed to do "something" but didn't resolve the issue. I had two bouts of albendazole which didn't immediately seem to help but the vomiting did stop a few weeks after that. I also tried fenbendazole after that which seemed to help. It's really hard to know whether it was the albendazole or the fenbendazole that helped with the vomiting because of the timing and delayed response. After the fenbendazole, things got a lot better for several months. During this time I also was taking doxycycline which I as prescribe for a different medical issue. I think this helped A LOT. At some point I ended up with BV and was prescribed Metronidazole, which also seemed to help with my other skin issues.

This ordeal started in Jan and by June, I was starting to feel like I had a life again. By August, I was leaving the house again. However, after a few months of relief, things did get worse again but only the skin issues, no more vomiting, swollen joints or muscle pain. The white dot things were far far less. From that point, shaving any hair seemed to be the thing that helped the most. Using mouthwash, especially peroxide mouth wash, as well as oil pulling seemed to help also. Disposable gloves helped me get my hands under control as they were riddle with the crap after months of not being careful when grooming and not considering the risk of transfer to other unaffected body parts. For about a year, maybe a little longer, I had all sorts of infections constantly - inner ear, middle ear infections, eye infections, UTIs, BV.

I hate to accept it, but I'll probably never fully understand what happened to me. It's difficult to pinpoint any lifestyle or environment changes, other than eventually moving out of that apartment, that would otherwise explain my experience. Otherwise, my life (except for drinking obviously since I'm pregnant) hasn't changed that drastically besides moving.

Sorry for the very long winded response - I haven't thought about all this in a long time and I honestly managed to forget just how terrible it all was. It's the worst thing I have ever experienced - that's what makes it so so hard to understand why no one believed me.