EUFAULA, Okla. — A group of swimmers who were in Lake Eufaula this past week say some of them developed an itchy rash.

Amy Wilson said she lives near the lake. She’d been out several times.

“We came back home, did our normal thing and ate dinner,” she recalled. “I woke up Sunday morning with a rash. I woke up itching like crazy. You kind of get a fever, but the itching was just awful.”

Worried this could be the chicken pox, she went to urgent care. She said they gave her a steroid shot and a topical cream. The next morning, her husband woke up with the same rash on his backside.

“It just showed up,” he said.

Wilson posted about her experience on Facebook to let people know. Around 11 people from her Facebook group also said they got the same rash after swimming in Lake Eufaula.

Professor and Chief of Infectious Diseases at OU-Health Dr. Douglas Drevets said, “My guess is, without actually examining the looking at them, is you can have a thing called ‘Swimmer’s Itch.’”

He explained this is caused by a family of parasites that live in fresh water.

“[Parasites] normally circulate between snails, sometimes slugs, or ducks,” he added. “There’s usually some other animal. I think the ones we have in North America that cause swimmer’s itch are usually in ducks.”

He continued, “This happens in the summer. It tends to be during heat waves in smaller amounts of water or shallow areas, when the water temperature can get really warm.”

Often times, this can be treated with over-the-counter or prescription medication and does go away.

The good news, according to Dr. Drevets, is the chances of contracting a serious disease from this infection is relatively low.

“Humans are not the parasite’s normal host. They get under our sin and they can’t go any father, so they die,” he said. “When they die, that’s when it causes the itch.”

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