scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

30.7.04

also, to clarify the extent of the poison iviness. Excuse misspellings, bad ..um.. commas and stuff, misplaced dots. Glasses got foggy. So. Can't see what i'm typing entirely. In any case. M came home with it after the canoe race (though he maintains that i came home with it and infected him, but in fact he had it before arriving in B/CS. So.) and maybe we both got it seperately, but in any case, it started inside my elbow (after it started on his ankle) and i scratched it for two days, give or take, without really noticing anything was particularly amiss. And then i looked at my elbow and thought i was getting dry skin or something - and then m went to the doctor (because there were some fishermen nearby that cought a flesh-eating bacterium) and the doc said it was poison ivy and gave him steroid pills. And mine spread. And his didn't really itch. And mine itched like mad. So eventually it was Monday and mine itched like mad and was spreading, and so on Tuesday i made an appt with the other doc (who i was very excited to have back on my insurance - work had switched our insurance and he wasn't on the new one, but another doc in his office was, so i went to this other guy, only he was so young! and not really ... he didn't have the sort of bedside gravitas. Though that might have been the sinus infection. But my doc is egyptian and fuzzy and very homeopathic (did i spell that right? i can't quite see - good heavens, this is a second set of parenthesis, isn't it?) - so if there is a cheapo herbal cure he'll mention it and then go on and give me some prescription or other. So.) and this doc, my doc, he gives me a steroid shot (i think he was expecting me to be scared of needles, so he offered me the shot, and i said Okay! and he said Anything at this point, right? and i said Yeah, pretty much) and a bag full of Allegra samples and tells me to get Pepcid because it blocks a different kind of histamine and to bathe / rinse my itchy parts in vinegar. Let me list my itchy parts. i'm good below the waist. Thank .. whatever. But.

So the inside of my arm, inside my elbow, is the absolute worst. And then all over my arms, and on my neck, and somehow in my fucking cleavage. How the fuck it got there i don't know. And on my belly. Both arms. Wrists, a little on one shoulder. So it itches like mad. And the rinsing itchy parts in vinegar? There is nothing that hurts like this. That scene in Dune sort of approximates it - where his hand is in the awful-box and he can feel the flesh crisping up and getting all barbecued and dropping off his bones - that's what rinsing poison ivy in vinegar is like. What's in the box? Pain. Pain is in the box. That's what it's like. I'm assuming. And i have to do this to my entire upper body ('cuz i forgot, it's on my back too).

Why do i suddenly feel like Mr. Pink?

Anyway.

Being itchy makes me grouchy. Probably being grouchy makes me wordy and elaborate. Maybe it's entertaining. Maybe it's a cautionary tale. So i rinse myself in vinegar and rinse off and take oatmeal baths and put Calomine all over myself until my skin is so dry, in my elbow, that it hurts to bend my arm, at which point i stop with the vinegar and Calomine and put extra-extra-sensitive-face-moisturizers and extra-extra-sensitive Aloe on it. A good idea, i think. So i'm grouchy. And completely unable to concentrate on anything except how fucking itchy i am.

I've been sleeping with socks on my hands.

Labels: health

scrawled @ 04:59