This is not going well

The wheels fell off the mouse project in the last few weeks. First off, some of the mice started barbering each other a bit, which means we had one in particular with missing chunks of hair. I pulled out Blaze, our sickly mouse, and Rascal, who had the hair loss, and put them in a cage together. This worked well.

Then I discovered that the pine bedding I was using is toxic for mice (and rabbits too, and my rabbits have been using it for years! But the rabbits' cages are more open, and rabbits are larger, so it didn't noticeably affect them. It may have damaged their livers though).

But it appears that the bedding was probably partially responsible for Blaze's "fading syndrome," and the fact that several of our other mice had some coat color changes (they are already growing new, more colorful hair). Blaze seems to be a weaker mouse overall, just genetically speaking, so apparently he was more affected.

Right when this started happening, The Girl and I realized that we had twin rashes. We caught hers pretty early, but since mine was on the back of my neck, it got pretty nasty before I realized that I wasn't just itchy because of the heat. The Girl's pediatrician suggested that it was mites (YUCK!) or a contact allergy. I figured it was the latter, especially after I googled mites and realized that it was pretty unlikely that mites were the problem. The hair had grown back, no itching.... So I figured it was a contact allergy, maybe even to the pine bedding. We used our medicines, which included hydrocortisone, religiously.

After five days, it was clear that both of our rashes were getting worse, not better. So we followed the pediatrician's advice and went to a dermatologist. The nurse practitioner took a scraping from The Girl and a biopsy from me. (Now I have a nickel-sized, shallow hole in my neck. It hurts.) Even before the scraping, she believed that we could have a fungus. The scraping confirmed that there was a mild positive for fungus, even with a very small amount of material scraped. The nurse also suspected a bacterial infection. They will know more when the biopsy comes back.

Guess what makes a fungal infection just blow up? Hydrocortisone. So the pediatrician totally wrecked us. For a $30 copay.

So we are coating ourselves with the right meds, but they don't control the itching. There is MUCH itching, for me in particular. It's pretty torturous. I've bought various anti-itch products with no really good results. I'm trying a new spray-on calamine lotion momentarily.

I've been treating Blaze with the same medicine I'm using. He looks a bit better.

As we wait for results, I've reviewed some options. I've talked extensively with a vet outside my area who has some experience with this sort of thing (my own vet doesn't treat mice). The very unfortunate thing is that the apparently healthy mice could be carriers of this fungus. I'm contacting a good small animal vet but it is likely that I will not be able to afford the various tests required to prove each of them free of disease. It's horrible to say, but I need to save our money for the human and canine members of the household. Some of us have medical problems that require a lot of available funds. Meanwhile, I've decided to wear gloves and use a lot of bleach, as well as to no longer allow the mice to go in the bathtub or on other surfaces (which is going to make cage cleaning a challenge).

Several of the mice had an upcoming home at The Boy's school. I suspect that I can no longer in good conscience let them go to the school. I haven't yet told the teacher, but I'm checking into a hamster that might need a home so that perhaps she can have something.

The cold, harsh truth is that I may have to part with the entire mouse herd. I can't go through this again, and I don't want to continue to risk the health of my kids and dogs. It's going to be a long road to recovery, and that road is going to involve a lot of washing stuff and applying ointment.

I haven't told the kids yet, and maybe this vet I'm investigating will have a miracle, but I'm not all that confident that this will be the case.

I'm very, very sad. I had no idea at all that this could turn out this way.