The Scabies That Weren’t

Written by Orli Matlow / Illustration by Eliza Stein

Like every great story, this one starts with a mysterious rash. Last January, I went on a healthcare odyssey that recruited a ragtag group of doctors, starting with a dermatologist, then an allergist, then back to the dermatologist, over to a rheumatologist, and then finally to an endocrinologist, who diagnosed me with Hashimoto’s Disease, a super-manageable autoimmune disorder I have the honor of sharing with my grandpa. I have my grandfather’s passion for lifelong learning and also his thyroid.

Before finally getting a diagnosis, one of the dermatologist’s theories as to why the rash wasn’t getting smashed by steroids was that it was actually scabies I had picked up on recent trip to Spain. According to her, the culprit for the rash—named Rashi after the most famous rabbi of medieval France— was a microscopic mite I’d encountered somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula, most likely from a sweater I bought at a vintage store in Madrid.

The doctor prescribed me Permethrin cream, and, when that didn’t work (probably because it was not, in fact, scabies), she gave me Ivermectin: the horse dewormer made famous by Trump in 2020 when he publicly promoted it as a treatment for Covid-19, all while hundreds of thousands of people were dying on his watch. I took the medication, and the side effects were pretty gnarly. I suffered from nerve pain, a zapping feeling along my arms and legs that I initially thought was the mites dying. For two weeks, I was nauseated and incredibly uncomfortable as I waited for it to pass through my system.

Of course, the Ivermectin did nothing to help me. But, throughout my non-deworming, I comforted myself with the knowledge that the people who were stupid enough to take an anti-parasite medication to treat a respiratory virus because Donald Trump told them to also suffered the same agony. It’s all about perspective.

This was written by Orli Matlow and illustrated by Eliza Stein (elizasteindesigns.etsy.com)