Let's rewind to a sweltering summer day, the kind where ancient air conditioning decides to take its own vacation. Added bonus: My sweet 8-year-old had a rash -- an ugly one, crawling up her leg.
Now, I could have skipped the University of Google and gone right to a doctor.
But it was the weekend and the pediatrician was out until Monday. That meant emergency rooms. Was it that serious? Would my kid catch some other kid's really awful sickness? How much would it cost out of pocket?
Besides, I had a clue. Bugs. Yep, I bagged them, two nasty little critters. I had evidence. Also (and this is key), I had just heard a news story about bedbugs.
I looked them up on the Internet. My evidence looked exactly like bedbugs.
As a parent, I fully committed to website instructions: We took every single thing out of my daughter's room. That's a lot of stuff. We tossed the mattress/box springs to the curb. We were responsible: We included "Do Not Take" signs. (Our neighbors not only didn't take, they walked a very wide berth around our house.)
Trash bags of our daughter's stuff went in the dryer and the hot sun. The goal was to fry the bedbugs, since the Internet told us bugs do not like heat. And because bedbugs really do not like cold, the American Girl dolls went in the deep freeze.
Do any tensions arise when you take every single thing out of an 8-year-old's room and put it in the washer/dryer/deep freeze/backyard? Why, funny you should ask. There was some tension.
Particularly when the storm clouds rolled in, and we had to rush to get it all back inside. And then had a lively debate about whether that action might mean infesting the other rooms with bedbugs.
But in the end, it was all about our child. We vacuumed and scrubbed every wall, every drawer, every crevice we could possibly reach. Froze that little American Girl doll Kit until ice crystals formed in her cute bobbed hair.
And then the breakdown came: We found another bug in the hall. My husband declared that we couldn't handle this alone. We called the exterminator and suffered two nights before he showed up on Monday.
The expert took one look at my baggie of bugs and said, "Lady, those aren't bedbugs."
Nope. They were beetles. They had absolutely nothing to do with the rash.
So what did we learn, after we defrosted Kit and made a trip to the mattress store?
After visiting a real pediatrician, we learned our daughter's rash probably came from a funky hotel pool. Pediatrician gave us the medicine to clear that right up. Whew.
It's OK to "attend" Google University -- it is cheap and accessible. Great recipes, news, nature photos, you name it. But if you're studying something truly important -- like, say, the health of your child -- get an expert's opinion (examples of experts: doctors, scientists, pest control specialists).
One more thing: A weekend pediatric visit costs less than a new mattress.
ActiveStyle on 07/20/2015