Alright, I’m telling my scabies story. I held off because the very day I found out the diagnosis was when the pie thing started up, and nobody wants to read about pies baked by a leper.
Here’s the deal: I’ve had an itchy, bumpy elbow for a couple of months. It wasn’t a big deal, but every so often it would bother me. I was pretty sure that it was just eczema, but I needed a doctor to tell me if my trying to sand off my elbow in the shower was the right/wrong thing to do. (I went to a dermatologist, to make sure I wasn’t jepordizing my chances to be an elbow model.)
My appointment was on Good Friday, and Lloyd and I joked ahead of time how I would go in and say, “Give it to me straight, Doc. I can take it – it’s elbow cancer, isn’t it?” Mind you, I was super-sure it was eczema. The doctor and I visited about life for a bit, then he looked at my elbow and said, “That looks like a classic case of scabies.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A parasitic mite that burrows under your skin and blah blah blah.” I didn’t hear a word after ‘skin’ because I was about to pass out. When I regained my senses he was prescribing a poison lotion and telling me, “Be sure to wash your bedding.” “Wash it? I’m gonna burn it.” I replied.
So anyway, I’ve spent the past week dousing my body with poison, washing everything I own more than he recommended, and feeling like a pariah. The only way it could be worse is if I had head lice. If I ever, ever get lice, I’ll have to shave my head.