Winter is a time of dry skin. It's a fact of life for me and about a bazillionty others as well. I invest in the best creams and lotions that I can find and slather them on in vain hopes that they'll magically do their work while I wash dishes, wash my hands frequently after cleaning up after puppies, and being outside in the winter weather. I'm an optimist that way. So when a puppy scratched the tender skin on my wrist with it's wee sharp nails, it kinda hurt. A shallow cut on dry skin is akin to a paper cut. It just hurts for no valid reason whatsoever. I knew the answer, however. Salve. It would both heal and moisturize. So I put about six times the amount of salve on that I actually needed, and slapped a ginormous band aid on over top it to keep my skin moisturized, and forgot about it.
Until the next morning, that is, when my wrist itched.
Off came the band aid, only to find a rash under it. Darn that latex allergy that I forgot I had. And this is where I'm going to have to confess that I'm ridiculously tired and in dire need of sleep. It's so bad that I wake up ready to nap, and I don't nap. It's a rare day indeed when I finally succumb to napping because I just don't do that. I tried napping on Sunday only to realize that I was too tired to actually fall asleep. Battling that "I''m so tired my eye balls actually hurt" thing is frustrating, and hinders sleep when you're laying there in pain. To tell you how tired I was, it took me a while to realize that the band aid wan't latex at all. It was the stretchy fabric kind. And then I realized that I never had a latex allergy in the first place. That was my daughter. I'm that kind of tired.
So I have this rash on my wrist, and it itches like a bugger. (If buggers itch. I'm not sure what a bugger is, really. I'm just being honest here.) I dealt with the itch for a day, because I was too tired to figure out anything more than putting more salve on it to help promote healing. Salve, though. No band aid. Because even if it isn't latex and I'm not allergic to latex (or not-latex), I'm not taking chances. My overtired brain can't follow the logic long enough to realize that this makes no sense at all.
All through church, my wrist itched. I felt like I had a disease that I should hide from the world. It got so bad that if anything rubbed against it, it actually hurt. My clothing, Louie's ear when I'd pet him, the computer when I typed. EVERYTHING. Did you ever try not letting your wrist touch anything? It's hard, because it's pretty much attached to your hand, which seems to be in everything, everywhere, all the time. I was so tired last night that I went to bed, and as I was just drifting off, despite the pain from my wrist touching the covers, I told Sam what was going on. He asked if I'd taken any Benadryl.
Well that would make sense, wouldn't it? Except I was far too tired at that point to get out of bed, trudge downstairs, and get it. I figured I'd be asleep in a few minutes and blissfully unaware. Oh, how wrong I was.
My wrist brushed against my pillow. I woke up.
My wrist touched the comforter. I woke up.
My wrist scraped across the bed sheets. I woke up.
All night long.
It only compounded the overtired thing, of course, and when the phone rang at 5AM to happily tell me that I got to sleep in an extra 2 hours because of a school delay, my wrist didn't actually me to do any sleeping. It was at that point that I figured out what my problem was.
Salve.
Back when I had a ginormous hole in my leg from falling through a floor, I developed an allergy to Neosporin. I'd been slathering that on liberally, trying to heal and moisturize. I'm an idiot.
Benadryl spray works wonders, let me tell you. After washing my wrist in soap and water a few times to remove any salve remains that I could, I spent the rest of the day randomly spraying my wrist with Benadryl. I can now happily say that when I touch my wrist, it doesn't make me want to scream. Or itch it. And while the rash is still not so fun to look at, and will itch if I aggravate it, we've come to an understanding that if I leave it alone, it'll leave me alone.
I probably should have gone to bed far earlier tonight that I am, because that overtired is really going to do me some damage someday.
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