May 2010

I think I have a tendency to be a little bit of a hypochondriac.  I don’t mean to be, but sometimes I hear symptoms of illnesses and they just seem to exactly match something that happened to me at one time or another.

I’ve diagnosed myself with PMLE or polymorphous light eruption, and I don’t think it’s the hypochondriac in me talking here.  PMLE is basically an allergy to the sun.

I blame it on spring.  When the weather is nice, the girls and I love to go outside and play.  When we would come inside, I noticed that my skin would get itchy.  I didn’t think much of it until the itch kept persisting.  I wasn’t using any new soaps or detergents and I couldn’t think of anything that would be causing the itch.  Then I noticed I was only itching on my arms and my neck — areas where the sun hit me.

I tested my hypothesis and found that every time I went outside, I would itch the rest of the day.  Finally, I googled my condition.

Turns out 10-15% of the population experiences this fun phenomenon.

Turns out it affects women more than men.

Turns out it often appears out of the blue in young adults.

Turns out there really is no cure except to expose your skin to the sun and wait for your skin to get used to the sun.

Turns out this may happen to me every spring.

Do you know how uncomfortable it is to have your skin constantly itch?  I find myself alternating between trying not to itch and itching so violently that I draw blood.

It seems I have a knack of coming down with crazy medical conditions.  I am not amused.

Whew.  The last few weeks I have been busy.  Too busy to blog.  I’ve been…

–administering end-of-the-year reading tests to two kindergarten classes

–organizing a community garden

–taking care of Caroline who got sick…and got sick again…and became crabby so I thought she was sick again though it turned out she wasn’t…and then she really did get sick again.  (I’ll end the ellipses there.  No more getting sick, Caroline!)

–working to reorganize an organization that is not working properly

–planning a visiting teaching conference

–seeing a TMJ specialist for my jaw

This is a fun story.  A few months ago my jaw started popping.  (That’s not the fun part of the story.)  I went to the dentist.  He was horrified with the noise.  He sent me to a specialist.  The specialist put a stethoscope thing on my jaw and had me open and close so he could measure the noise and range of movement.  As he was showing me the results, he said that all of the numbers should be below 20.  My numbers were all over 400.  Apparently he has only seen one other patient in his life that has even come close to sounding as bad as my jaw sounds.  At my last appointment I got a lovely mouth guard to wear at night.  As I was paying, the secretary gave me a sideways look, leaned forward and whispered, “Are you the one with the really loud pop?”  I said yes.  She said, “Wow.  You’re kind of like a star around here.”

Anyone want my autograph?