I developed an itchy spot on my left wrist. Which is a new one for me. It started several months ago back when Kentucky weather revisited the 30s at least one day every week. So I dismissed it as dry skin.
Well, not really. I hoped it was just dry skin because I don't need a new weird place for a stress rash. Altho at least my wrist is less awkward to scratch than my go-to stress rash spot (lower abdomen). Still annoying, tho.
It was always one particular spot. Every few weeks I'd inspect it for any sign of a splinter or scab or scratch that wasn't healing. "No, that's a freckle. Wait. Nope, freckle. Is that a freckle? I can't even tell anymore." They're all freckles. You'd be amazed how many freckles a pasty pale nerd girl can have in a one inch square spot on her wrist. Then I'd dig around with the extra pointy tweezers. I never found anything. So I'd lotion up again and start the process over in two to four weeks.
But I was sure it was a new and strange stress rash. Thanks, anxiety.
Earlier this week I was scratching it and inspecting the spot and it looked like there was actually something there. So when I got home from work I dug around with the tweezers and sliced down through several layers of skin and other misc wrist matter and there was something. And I pulled it out. And it was one of those things that as soon as you pull it out it's gone. It's not stuck in the tweezers but it didn't fall out of the tweezers either. It's like when an illusionist makes the Statue of Liberty disappear only really way less impressive.
So there was something in my wrist and now it's gone and I don't know what it was. I also have no idea why it wasn't visible until this week. So many mysteries. Very dull mysteries. And yet I have theories:
It was a tiny ingrown hair. My arm hair is very light, so one could plausibly hide behind a freckle or just be really hard to see except in the right light at the exact right angle.
Some odd foreign matter got into a small scratch and the scratch closed up over it but it irritated and irritated and maybe my immune system tried to encase it until it could push the alien bit out. Which sounds crazy, I know, but I actually had that happen years ago when a trichome from the evil vine I was pulling off of my back fence got inside a knuckle of my right hand via a scratch from the weeding process. The knuckle swelled and itched and looked pretty nasty. I had to take a special antibiotic to encase the plant fiber in a scab prison and wait until the scab naturally fell off. (I did not wait. I picked that scab off as soon as I could.)
It was a stress rash all along. The little bit of whatever was a recent bit which just happened to be very very near the itchy spot. It's just a sadistic mind game by, well, my mind. Which is also plausible because since my wrist stopped itching my usual just-below-my-navel stress rash is back. Either the bit I pulled out or the change in stress rash spots is a coincidence.
These are the three most likely options I've come up with. I have clearly spent way too much time thinking about it.
I don't actually have a Pardon My Metaphor for this. Yet. The linear obvious one is to keep trying, look below the surface, don't accept the easy answer yadda yadda. I'm sure when I do metaphor the wrist-itch, several years or even decades from now, it will relate to climate change or my battles with Kentucky retirement system (whatever version hasn't gone bankrupt or declared illegal by the state supreme court).
So check back in a few years. I'll try to keep using the Pardon My Metaphor tag, at least until I forget.
If you're in any of the areas in excessive crazy heat advisory -- most of the bottom half of the continental US and parts of the northern half too -- take care. It's going to be a long sizzling hot summer. You have months to get heatstroke. Don't rush it.
p.s. It's been a bad week as you may have guessed form the last post. I'm trying to keep it light, make a few lame jokes -- for myself as much as for y'all readers. As always, I understand if you want to skip these difficult days. I'd love to skip out on them myself. I can learn whatever lessons the universe is trying to beat into me at the next bad bright summer.
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