Where Does It Itch?

The dermatologist I saw this past Tuesday wanted to see “where it itched”, or where it “started”, or where it itched “the most”. He looked at my belly, the backs of my knees, my underarms, and confirmed there was no rash. He did the right thing for diagnostic purposes, satisfying the question of whether there were any visible symptoms, but I don’t think I did a good job conveying the fact that it happens everywhere, and itches “the most” everywhere.

So I spent an hour this evening as I was doing some other stuff on the computer documenting each itch as it occurred. I immediately scratched each one gently to make it stop, specifically so I could track itches in as discrete a manner as possible.

There’s an acceleration and an intensification that happens after the first half hour. I’d say about 75% of the events I recorded below happened in the last half hour of this little experiment.

At this point, I am very itchy (at this very moment: the top of my right thumb, the back of my scalp on the right side, and the outer part of my left shin are all clamoring for a scratch).

I’m going to take a shower, which is the only thing that seems to relieve this for a time. With any luck my skin and my brain will converge on the kind of calmness that puts me to sleep.

Either that or I’ll itched awake and back at the computer again around 1am, continuing to read more about what the sensation of itch IS (first datum: itches are fired up by totally different channels than pain) and why it’s so resistant to my attempts to meditate it out of existence.

(The rest of this post is just a big long list of body parts. I’m not going to tell you not to read it, but… it’s just a big long list.)

Begin: 10:10pm