Sunday, November 20, 2016

Itchy Bones

Five months after I broke my neck, I suffered serious head trauma in an accident.  After the accident, I knew my name, and I knew my home address, but I couldn't remember anything else.  It took several days for me to remember phone numbers, and I kept "losing time" for six months after that.  I broke my neck falling off a horse, and I had a concussion then, also.  I'm a klutz, but I usually bounce back after a fall, or a blow to the head, pretty quickly.  But I also have proof via X-rays, MRIs and CAT scans that I've caused a lot of weird damage and, I call it "cross-wiring," to my brain.
   I suffer from migraine headaches more frequently; I have become/am addicted to caffeine; I lost part of my sense of smell, and part of my taste; and my body reacts to certain things oddly.  For instance, if I see a spot on my leg, and scratch at it with my fingernails, I'll frequently feel as if I'm scratching my back, or my ribs, on the other side of my body.  Or, I'll scratch a spot on my arm, and my foot reacts as if I've scratched it.
   The last couple of months, I've had itchy bones.  I woke up two weeks ago, and the bottom of my left big toe itched.  I rubbed it with my right foot and heel.  The itch intensified, and moved slightly up the body to include the joint to my foot.  I scratched it with my fingernails, but the itch felt as if it were deeper.  I rubbed my toe against the corner of the bed post, but that didn't help, either.  I grabbed an old hard plastic bristled hair brush that I use on horses' manes and tails, and I scratched the itch, rather savagely.  It didn't go deep enough.  I finally just laid in bed and twitched for about an hour, until the itch subsided.  What was so frightening to me was the fact, that if I had a certain object within my household, I'd have used it to scratch the itch.  I am so very happy that I no  longer own, or have easy access to, a wire brush - the kind one uses to remove rust and scale from exposed metal.  My toe itched so badly, that if I'd had a wire brush available, I would have scoured the flesh down to the bone to get rid of the itch.
   This morning I woke up and realized that I had been scratching the tops of two fingers on my left hand - the fingers were pink and swollen, and I could see scratch marks from my fingernails on the tops of the fingers and down about an inch onto the back of my hand.  This afternoon, my right thigh started to itch.  I pounded on it with a hair brush for 30 minutes before the itch slowly left....
   Thank goodness I see my doctor the first full week of December - don't know if I need to see a neurologist, or go back to the psychiatrist about this....

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