Tuesday, January 01, 2008
the itch
i actually wanted this blog post to be a wrap-up of my horrible experience with The Rash (thus dubbed because now the derm reg thinks it isn't pityriasis rosea any more, not after The Rash broke into a million tiny papules and started marching inexorably up my arm and onto the backs of my fingers. horrors. but i'm getting ahead of myself here) but since this skin-raping son of a bitch isn't going anywhere (you try staying civil when you've what feels like massive throbbing sunburn and a million mosquito bites all. fucking. over. warrrrrrgh.) it looks like i shall have to post from the trenches in the War against The Itch.
anyway this whole fiasco started about 8 weeks ago when i was doing the polyclinic bit of fam med. i started feeling crappy and achy, and i chalked it up to just another one of those stupid viruses that make their rounds twice a year and make everyone sick and grumpy. i should have known something was up then. the last time i had a bout of "flu" was back in primary school, and it never made me feel as shitty as i did then.
then i got a tiny little patch of rash, on the inside of my elbow. it itched like fuckery. i put some steroid cream on it, and it went away. huzzah!
and then came The Rash. it was nasty. it started around my arms and spread all the way to my wrist. it was so insanely itchy that i literally scratched off all the skin above my elbow up to my shoulder. i sucked this up for about 4 weeks, self-medicating with anthistamines, till i couldn't take it any more and went to my gp for meds.
he took one look at my rash and gave me steroids. this lasted another week. the rash got worse. i freaked out and went back to him, this time so insanely itchy i couldn't drive straight. he gave me IM pred and cetrizine. i went home to try to sleep in the middle of the day so i wouldn't scratch my skin to the bone.
that night i woke up and boy, was i itchy. i was literally dancing with the effort of not scratching every waking second. i drove down to my gp, who took one look at me with eyes WIDE OPEN a la Graves and doing the ITCH JIG round and round his office, pleading for more steroids and antihistamines like a subutex junkie, and-- i honestly don't blame him-- he wrote me a prescription for alprazolam, so i wouldn't scratch myself to death, and atarax. i was so itchy i downed the meds in the clinic and drove home (ya ya i know not supposed to drive on benzos. but it was a 2 minute drive and i was WIDE AWAKE FROM THE ITCH.)
then as i sat on my bed at home waiting for blessed sleep i realised my rashes were getting worse. redder. and different. kinda flat. and.. shit. i was wheezing asthma-style. i checked with my stet. yup. wheezing away. damn. and my lips were getting kinda puffy, like when after i eat seafood. i checked my pulse and i was tachycardic.
ohhh shites. i considered driving to the ed and changed my mind once i started not being able to breathe very well. i ran to my dad's room and asked him to drive me to the changi ed. and i tried to stay awake during the drive there because my dad didn't know how to get there and if i didn't get to the ED, god knows what would've happened to me. eventually after about 20 minutes i got to the ED and found the nicest doctor in the ED on duty that night. thank god.
anyway everyone knows what happened after that. so i'm not gonna repeat the rest of the story. but what i will do is thank everyone who came down to see me, or expressed at least some interest in how i was doing. for buying all the shit that made my room look inappropriately like an abandoned hotel room the day after an afterparty. for plonking yourselves on my bed/chair/windowsill and just filling in the lonely hours. for buying food that was recognizable as such, and magazines to amuse me. (kah heng! don't be so prudish la) you won't know how much better you guys made me feel till you (touch wood) get hospitalised too, one day. thanks.
wasn't my room nice, though?
anyway i'm feeling a bit better thanks to all the antihistamines i'm on. and i'm moisturising like crazy, and hoping it'll go away soon-- PR can run for up to 3 months. please don't freak out when you see my rash, and no it's not contagious.
2007 reflections when patho is over!
+ fictions&fires
2:19 PM
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plangere, latin: to strike, or to lament.
in the depth of winter i finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
--albert camus
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to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
-- ee cummings
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