Tuesday, December 14

Showerheads....

So, a fellow cf mama, blogger, and friend wrote me an email after Madeline cultured Pseudo. (You can check out
Jen's blog called "Keeping Up With the Jones" if you click -------> here) While sharing her experiences with me about when her son cultured Pseudo, she began to give me some tips.

One of those suggestions or tips was to clean out all of our showerheads and faucets in the house by removing them and soaking them in bleach. I vaguely remembered hearing about pseudo growing in shower heads, etc about a year ago. So when Jen mentioned this to me and said that her family cleans theirs out every 3 months....I started to think....

maybe that is where the pseudo came from!

This new thought of "maybe I found where it came from" did not stop the frantic cleaning spree that I started the day that we were told Madeline cultured pseudo. It actually spurred a wildly nutty OCD of hand washing, lysoling, and making my head go in circles about this crazy pseudo...where ever it was I wanted it GONE.

So, Saturday night after getting that email from Jen. Jack and I did just that....we soaked our faucets and showerheads in bleach. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. Granted we did not take pictures of everything bu,t we did snap a few of what we found  in the kitchen faucet....

ewww..."pseudo heaven"
So, of course the the faucet looked clean from the outside but what about all that water that sit and collects
under the faucet...or around the pipes??? Some of what you see in the photo is plumbers putty but some is CLEARLY not.

This was one faucet out of 3 we cleaned as well as 2 more shower heads. I also found an article that was publishedabout psuedo taking over your shower heads. You can view it by clicking ----->here. I found it interesting that the steel/metal shower heads did not grow much bacteria. To me, that clearly means that once we get out of this rental and  into our new house that will be completed in January 2011..we will be purchasing metal shower heads and cleaning them every 3 months. Pseudo we gone!

Some of you may be saying, "well how does this affect Madeline if she doesn't take showers?"
See, Madeline has taken 2 showers with Jack and I over the past 3 months. It also should be known that psuedo can be found on your skin. So, if jack or myself were to take a shower..the pseudo could pass to our skin and then on to Madeline. This stupid psuedo is found in so many naturally made places that it nuts to think about. To name a few, ponds, sink bowls, counters, dirt, hay, skin, and the list goes on....

There is no doubt that pseudo is everywhere and it isn't harmful to everyone. But is is harmful enough to Madeline and other cfers .... that the least I can do is clean these out every 3 months to help in the fight against pseudo.

I will be updating later about our first TOBI (inhaled antibotic ) treatment today...It finally arrived.

4 comments:

  1. We actually change our entire shower head every three months, it's also surprising how much gunk is hidden beneath the taps as well-gross in fact!

    Good luck with the nebulised treatment, has
    Madeline ever had a neb before? I will keep everything crossed all goes nice and smoothe.

    xx

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  2. Ooh forgot to ask, do you have any house plants in soil? If so get rid of them! x

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  3. Yuck we will be doing that as soon as I get home. Actually maybe I can convince him to do it before we get home....and....Gemma I did not even think about the house plants, I will have to get rid of mine.

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  4. @Kort

    I have left some information for Sandy on cystic life but if you don't use the site, I can pass all the info onto you too Kort.

    They're just the basic things that we have always been told to avoid. It's about balance and risk etc

    You really could go crazy about trying to get rid of all the germs and end up fighting a losing battle, but there are definately things that you can do to try and minimise exposure.

    I really hope both of you ladies can clear this bacteria from your daughters and keep it away :) x

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