Monday, December 10, 2007
Still itching after all these years
Right before Christmas when I was 7, I rode a carousel in a mall in Memphis, where I promptly contracted chicken pox from a kid who shared the teacup ride with my sister and me. (Or so my mom tells me. How she narrowed down the chicken pox culprit to this particular teacup, I have no idea.) Anyway, this meant that I spent most of my Christmas that year being itchy and miserable, with only my new Cabbage Patch doll to comfort me.
Fast-forward 20 years later, and I'm once again facing the prospect of an itchy Christmas. This time it's a sudden and persistent outbreak of hives, the source of which I can't seem to hone in on, apparently not having been blessed with my mother's powers of deductive reasoning. (Actually, I'm pretty sure it's some Bath & Body Works shower gel given to me by my grandmother last Christmas that I just got around to opening. My dermatologist warned me years ago about the dangers of Bath & Body Works, but did I listen? No.) Anyway, what I lack in deductive reasoning skills, I made up with my memory, as I was able to recall my mom's solution for combating itchiness: Aveeno. (Also recommended by my dermatologist, by the way. Why didn't I listen to her, again?) Dousing myself with the stuff in both the bath and shower has proved to temporarily halt the itching, but the hives still haven't disappeared completely. And this year, I'm afraid, I won't even have a Cabbage Patch doll to comfort me. But with any luck, I will have noise-cancelling headphones and My So-Called Life DVDs, the two items at the top of my Christmas list. And I know where all the old Cabbage Patch dolls are, just in case those don't do the trick.
Right before Christmas when I was 7, I rode a carousel in a mall in Memphis, where I promptly contracted chicken pox from a kid who shared the teacup ride with my sister and me. (Or so my mom tells me. How she narrowed down the chicken pox culprit to this particular teacup, I have no idea.) Anyway, this meant that I spent most of my Christmas that year being itchy and miserable, with only my new Cabbage Patch doll to comfort me.
Fast-forward 20 years later, and I'm once again facing the prospect of an itchy Christmas. This time it's a sudden and persistent outbreak of hives, the source of which I can't seem to hone in on, apparently not having been blessed with my mother's powers of deductive reasoning. (Actually, I'm pretty sure it's some Bath & Body Works shower gel given to me by my grandmother last Christmas that I just got around to opening. My dermatologist warned me years ago about the dangers of Bath & Body Works, but did I listen? No.) Anyway, what I lack in deductive reasoning skills, I made up with my memory, as I was able to recall my mom's solution for combating itchiness: Aveeno. (Also recommended by my dermatologist, by the way. Why didn't I listen to her, again?) Dousing myself with the stuff in both the bath and shower has proved to temporarily halt the itching, but the hives still haven't disappeared completely. And this year, I'm afraid, I won't even have a Cabbage Patch doll to comfort me. But with any luck, I will have noise-cancelling headphones and My So-Called Life DVDs, the two items at the top of my Christmas list. And I know where all the old Cabbage Patch dolls are, just in case those don't do the trick.
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