Hello. I am a young woman who lives in Ellenwood, GA, a suburb that sprawls three different counties that border Fulton County, of which Atlanta is the county seat and our state capital. I have a rather pathetic request to make to the worldwide web: we have fleas in the house, and we need a way to get rid of them. The "we" includes myself, my mother who is in her 50s, and my oldest thirty-something-year-old brother. My mother makes $53K a year, but she has her seemingly endless bills to pay, and in any case, hasn't really taken this flea situation seriously. My brother has been good help, but he can only afford so much, and he refuses to consider getting the house treated by professionals, even though these fleas are still in the house, because of the price and because he simply thinks it's unnecessary. Meanwhile, I'm still out of school (college) and I'm still getting bitten by these things. As of today (October 17, 2009), I've been applying to work all over (and hasn't the whole country, really, of course? But I have it worse off than most workers -- I don't have a degree or any really good experience -- I've already been looking for three years now), but I still have no job or any sort of income at all, unless I sell books off eBay or Half.com. I don't want to flea bomb with store-bought foggers because we simply don't have enough space (too much junk in the house) to allow us to move things around to bomb the house for an hour or two. Plus, we've powdered each room in our house at least once or twice. I have the feeling that using any more over-the-counter pesticides like the flea powder or the carpet spray will make them resistant or will just not work.; at least with the professionals, we will be given likely stronger items that they (hopefully) would die quickly enough to be unable to resist, and we will get regularly quarterly check-ups.
I need up to $700 to cover the professionals (between $300-$400 for a year of treatment); our dog finally getting a flea bath at an animal hospital, which she hasn't had in years, due to my mother's negligence and my inability to care for her the way she needs to be cared for (I have no way to port her around myself); and any possible doctor's visits so that I can finally afford to see a dermatologist, since I've been out of school for a year (I attend Georgia State -- check the tuition prices! No, I don't qualify for financial aid.) and I'm near the age (almost 26) where I wouldn't really qualify to be covered by my mother's health insurance.
Here's my explanation for how things actually got this bad: We've had our current dog Savannah for about 13 years. We had a black dog, Lucky, as her companion/rival/sometimes-enemy. These dogs are outside dogs. Lucky died June 21, 2009 of unknown causes. We could only suppose that she died from drinking water spiked with antifreeze near our A/C unit outside, or maybe from worms or some heart trouble, since my mom described her as weak the last time she saw her alive. We never took the dogs regularly to the vet, so naturally, we never knew what could have made this dog sick. Additionally, Lucky was likely mentally challenged -- she was born from a litter whose mother and father were brother and sister -- and traumatized from being beaten up as a puppy by some of her own brothers and sisters before they were given away to the local animal shelter, so we could never lift her or put a leash on her or she would growl or threaten to bite us.
After Lucky died, it was Mom's idea to start letting Savannah in the house repeatedly because Mom's theory for Lucky's death at the time was "heat" (*sigh*), and thus, Savannah was coming in and staying in the house all day and night.
Here's me bringing my dog in around early July:
Savannah would walk around sometimes, follow me into the living room or even our den from the dining room (where the back door was), and she was always rather violently scratching and biting herself. I would not pet Savannah most of the time because whenever I did, my hands and arms itched and I had to scrub my hands with soap and water. It wasn't until late July when I noticed I was getting a quite a few bumps on my skin, and I was always scratching my legs and feet. I woke up in the middle of the night with my laptop one night in early August, and I noticed a black speck bounce towards the LCD screen. I had no choice but to conclude that it was a flea!
I moved downstairs that night, and tried to sleep on the air mattress in the den, but sleep would not come and I ended up staying up the rest of that day. I had to distract myself with researching about fleas and flea bites. When Mom came back from work, I begged her to let me know where some hydrocortizone cream was, and Mom told me my brother still had half a tube left. I itched so much with so many bites on me, I ended up finishing the tube. Mom had to promise me to buy more.
The next three weeks consisted of me sleeping in Mom's room, finishing off whole tubes of hydrocortizone bought from Costco, and scratching my legs endlessly, much like my dog was doing to herself. My brother found fleas on his socks that followed him to work, and that pushed Mom to buy some flea powder and a bottle of flea room and carpet spray from the local Petsmart. We powdered and vacuumed my brother's room and my own, but the fleas came back after three weeks, especially when Mom never cleaned her room until just the middle of last month. My brother has seen fleas in his room again at least one more time after the initial invasion of his room back in August. My room was the first place where the fleas made their comeback, and they seem to be following me around, mainly. I really don't know what to do with them.
I have scars and black marks all over my ankles, my lower legs, and some black marks on my arms. I don't know if these scars will ever go away, and I keep getting the feeling that they really won't. It got to points where I had nowhere to sleep at night without getting bitten. I slept in my mom's car to cope one night, and I got a weird bump on my thigh from it all. Most of my wardrobe I can't wear anymore, because those clothes itch. There have been times where I put on certain pants and my pair of Nikes, and I would constantly move around, brush my skin, and even scratch to deal with the sensation, real or imagined (damned if I know!), of SOMETHING crawling all over me. I had a hair appointment that lasted for three hours, and my shoes kept itching. I had to take off my shoes to make my feet stop feeling weird -- the rest of my body had me jerking around in my chair the rest of the time. There were times when I put on a pair of socks, and I had to either take them off after itching a lot, and I got bites in the places where I wore the socks for my trouble, or I coped by spraying bug spray on my clothes, and it usually helped the sensations stop. From getting my hair done, my scalp itched A LOT, and I ended up washing my hair with detangling shampoo mixed with Palmolive dishwashing liquid to cope, since I am wearing braids, and I really can't tell whether or not the fleas are or were in my hair.
There was a sale at JCPenney going on one Friday, and we went to buy clothes. I had only been awake for an hour, and I was lacking some energy. Mom started grumbling at me at one point, accusing me of just making a scene out of being tired. She went to try on her clothes, and for the most part, her skin was untouched, she had no bites or scars to complain about on her body anywhere, and when she yelled at me to try on some clothes, I barely had the energy to get up and put on a shirt. I finally started to hyperventilate, and then, I ended up bawling out of (I guess) absolute stress and probably anemia. I couldn't stop myself from crying for a good ten minutes straight, and I was too distraught to go down the escalator with Mom. We ended up going home, her in complete shame. I didn't talk for another hour. Mom just thought I was acting out. I honestly don't know what it was.
I haven't had anemia in years, and finally, I had to take iron pills again and sleep a lot, because the fleas had robbed me of my sleep and who knows whether they had drained me enough to lack blood...
I still get what look like little bites or blisters on me, even now that it's getting cold in Georgia, and Mom keeps passing it off as just a rash. My skin looks nasty now, my hands seem to be flaking up, and my skin rarely clears up of acne. I seem to be the only one getting these things, while my mom and my brother can sit anywhere and walk anywhere in the house, and be all clear. I have to be overly cautious and sit high off the ground and constantly be on my guard, or else, I'll feel like something is biting me, or else, I just end up finding what seems to be a bite, with no fleas in sight. I really don't get it.
I know I sound like a lazy bum for sure, and maybe even an overacting one with hopefully some paranoia (I wish, at this point), but I'm really tired of asking for my brother and my mother for help, and my brother acting like we can keep powdering the house until the day we're in the clear, and my mother acting like it's all in my head and it's not a big deal. I'm not a vain person, but I had clear skin before this, I had normal-looking arms, legs, and feet before this, I had acne once in a while, not every single day, and I didn't have pimples on my face that I couldn't differentiate from flea bites. I could wear all my clothes, not just pajamas and nightgowns. I didn't have to do laundry every single day, only for some items just to itch, regardless. I just want to be able to sleep in my room and feel comfortable in my own house again, hopefully before I can return to school, which is looking increasingly unlikely, or at least, extremely impractical at this point.
Please help me. While I look for work, $700 would be highly appreciated from any kind, sympathetic person who can help put some normalcy back into my life. $400 is what I would minimally need, but $700 is what will be optimum for all my current needs. I wouldn't be forced to ask if I had a job, or if I had people I could rely on or ask for help. I don't even have a friend's house I could stay at, and I'm running out of spare clothes to wear. I would really, really, really appreciate it if someone helped me out. That, and my dog deserves the care she's not getting because she simply deserves a better owner than us, and if she had gotten an appointment right after Lucky had died, we wouldn't be dealing with this now. Since Mom thinks of Savannah as just a cheap security system that just needs food and water every day, there's really nothing I can do on my own. Mom has the real power on her side, and she won't do anything with it because she says she's almost maxed out from her own bills and having to cover my own (i.e. credit cards) and my schooling. (Again, I need work really bad.) PLEASE HELP.
Thanks to all who've read my really long post! :)
