July 18th, 2023
𝙋𝙨𝙮𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙘
Well, I’ve finally gone crazy.
(Okay, crazier than usual…)
It seems my brain has found a way to give my body physical symptoms. Isn’t that fun? 😕
The word psychosomatic even sounds like it means you’ve gone nuts. It has the word psycho in it, so there’s that.
I’ve developed something called neuropathic dermatitis. Also known as neurodermatitis. And dermatitis sounds like there would be a rash but there’s not; there is no physical, outward sign. Basically, it means that nothing is actually wrong with my skin but my brain tells the nerves in my body “Listen, you’re not okay.” My brain tries to say that to the rest of me some days, too.
I start itching in the same couple of places every night, right at bedtime. And I don’t mean a little annoying feeling where you can scratch or rub the area and it’s gone for awhile. I mean 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦 itching, like I have never experienced before, that makes you want to scratch so hard that you could rip your skin, and then scratching does 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 to alleviate the itch – it doesn’t even stop for a few seconds. In fact, the worst and most common complication of this diagnosis is skin infection from where people do just that, injure themselves just because they can’t stop scratching it so hard. It feels like you need to scratch 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 your skin.
Yes, I know, if it itches, DON’T scratch it. More histamines start dancing around in there and make it worse. You’ll itch even more. But you don’t understand this kind of itching. Creams don’t help it. Steroids don’t help it. Oatmeal baths don’t help. Warm or cool compresses don’t stop it (in fact getting warm makes it even worse somehow.) Antihistamines don’t help it.
I can’t fall asleep until somewhere around 2:00 a.m. every night and wake up around 5:00-6:00 because I’m itching; apparently my brain is still working overtime in my sleep when I don’t even know I’m stressed.
The most common causative factor (often referred to as “trigger” these days) of this idiopathic disorder is…(drumroll, please…) S͛T͛R͛E͛S͛S͛. Yep, you read that right. Stress (also translated as grief in my scenario) has taken over. It’s in control. Clearly I am not.
Y’all, I really actually checked my bed for bedbugs (and I don’t GO anywhere to even be exposed to anything like that) because I couldn’t figure out what could be making me itch this badly.
I’m not using new soaps, laundry detergent, lotions, etc. There is no rash. There are no bug bites. If it’s not currently itching (and so I’m not scratching) then you can’t even see any indication that there is a problem. But it literally feels like something is crawling around under my skin…hundreds of something’s. It doesn’t spread anywhere, always the same two spots and always at night. These are apparently two hallmark signs of this specific diagnosis. It will occasionally itch a little (same spots) during the day and yesterday I was able to pin those episodes yesterday with times when I actually was more upset and stressed. Fortunately those times aren’t as bad as at night, only mildly annoying.
WHY AM I TELLING YOU ALL OF THIS?
Because it is real and it was 100% caused by my grief journey. They can say it is stress-related, yes, but every particle of stress I have right now is related to losing my husband. I have only mentioned this to a couple of people because it makes me sound like I have either the plague or the creepy crawlies…or that I’m just plain nuts. I am NOT contagious and there are NO bugs! I can neither confirm or deny the rest. I also know that I’ve required a lot of prayer from a lot of people lately and it probably gets old hearing about how screwed up my life is right now. I haven’t wanted to say that there is “something else wrong with me,” plus it makes me sound like a lunatic and like it is “all in my head.” I assure you, it’s not; if you could see those places on my skin at night or when I first wake up in the morning, you’d know that there’s more to it but that still doesn’t make it sound any less ridiculous even to me.
I’m getting very little sleep, am beginning to feel delirious at times, have even less control over my emotions (because I’m getting no sleep), and it is beginning to feel like more than I can handle…again. I was just starting to feel, not “better,” not less sad or lonely or lost, but maybe just as if, well, if I’ve gotten this far then it’s not going to be fun and I’m still going to hate this life without him but it looks like I’m going to do it; I’m going to live through it. Now…now it just feels like the task got even bigger. If this is what Paul’s “thorn” was, in the Bible, I know now why he begged to have it removed from him; it would make perfect sense to me now, for it to have been this unexplainable thing that appears to have no reason to occur but, nevertheless, just IS. (I know a lot of experts believe it was epilepsy but I’m just saying this would have been bad, too.)
Isn’t it funny how, when you’re grieving, you feel like telling other people how you feel is too burdensome? Like, if you keep telling them how awful you feel, it’ll just be too much for them and they will avoid being around you? Heck, I’d avoid being around me right now, if I could, probably. If you’re someone who is grieving and are having more physical symptoms of that condition than you would care to explain, just know that it is real and that our minds can only take so much before it tries to find a way to protect us. Unfortunately for me, this particular coping mechanism may take my mind off of grieving temporarily as I claw at my own skin, but not in an effective way; only in a way that feels even worse than it does at all the other times. And maybe for you it’s not being able to sleep due to insomnia (I had that for the first few weeks), maybe it’s not being able to eat, no matter how much you know you need to (I lost about 12 pounds in the first two weeks and then have continued steadily, albeit less quickly, since then. Maybe it’s nausea or diarrhea (yep, been there, too). Or maybe it’s something I haven’t experienced but it’s making you feel like you’re going insane. Well, insanity is relative, I suppose. I certainly feel that way sometimes now because I don’t recognize who I am a lot of the time. The day I went from a “we” to just me…I lost a piece of myself and it feels like it equates to having an essential part amputated. Like learning to walk again after losing a leg while still having terrible, excruciating phantom pains because your brain often tells your body that the leg is still there when you can look and clearly see that it’s not. But it hurts anyway. That change of identity makes you feel a little “crazy” for awhile. I mean, how is it possible for me to not know who I am? Still, it feels as if I don’t because I’m so different now.
So, for now, I learn to live with a new thorn and just keep praying daily that it will be removed. Life was feeling hard enough, impossible really, before this problem came along so I could certainly use a break. I do know that, even in the roughest nights of the storm, God is still here. He still holds me in the palm of His hand. For today, knowing that is enough. So I just keep swimming…
God is in the Outcome 