At
3am on Feb. 25th, about 40 hours after returning from Thailand,
I
awoke with an insatiable
desire to SCRATCH my leg. It was farging
brutal. Generally,
I pride myself on abstaining from scratching things
such as mosquito
bites and even bites, although the latter sometimes do
get the better of
me. In short, I'm not a scratcher.
But
this urge was something different. It had hold of my whole
body. I
couldn't NOT scratch!!
A few minutes after awakening with the affliction
and switching on
the light it was apparent I'd already been scratching
in my sleep.
But even scratching didn't help - it made it worse.
What's more, the
itchy area seemed to be spreading! I was even starting
to groan because
it itched SO MUCH ... and as I did so, I thought, holy
moly, I'm like a
beast here, scratching out of control and making wild
noises. Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!
I went to the bathroom and ran cold water
over my legs.
That
eased the itching a bit. But after a while I had to scratch
again.
What the hell was
going on? Eventually, summonsing all my willpower, I
was able to get back
to sleep. In the morning I awoke with the urge to
scratch my neck.
My face felt funny too. In the bathroom mirror, a
swollen red face
looked back at me. Hmmmm .... I wasn't feeling
particularly embarrassed,
nor was I sunburned. There was something
nastily mysterious
at work here.
My
legs were burning; begging me to run my fingernails rapidly
across
them. At this
time of the day, having more wherewithall and ambition
than the night before,
I refused to give in to the bitchy itchy. But
then I felt something
weird on my back. What the hell was that?
Stripped of those
soft, comfortable flannel pyjamas, the sight was
scary. My back
was doing a good impression of a field of strawberries.
Blotches of red everywhere.
It was weird and it got got even weirder
because as the welts
on my back surfaced, the ones on my legs
disappeared and as
the itch would take over my arms, for example, the
red on my stomach
would recede.
The
itch reaction was so strong that I reckoned it must have been
an
allergic reaction
to something. A mental inventory of the previous
day's consumption
revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe, then, it
was something I'd
eaten or encountered while in Thailand.
Clothes
seemed to amplify the itchiness so I walked around the
apartment nude most
of that day. That felt better, even though it was a
bit chilly.
I figured, hey, I'd rather be chilly than have to deal with
the full force of
THE ITCH! I didn't go to the doctor that day, hoping
that the itch would
pass on its own. But that night I couldn't get to
sleep because of
"the urge." I got up and ran ice across the most
seriously affected
areas; this time my legs, toes and arms. In this
frustrated state
I vowed to go to the doctor the next morning.
At
7am my face was a bright red beet, my back a strawberry patch,
my
legs raspberry bushes
and my stomach a big red apple. Into the Pansong
Medical Clinic I
went. I wondered if the one nurse who spoke English
would be there.
She was - whew. She escorted me to the doctor's
office. They
checked me out, gasped, and chattered on in Korean for
about 3 minutes.
Wondering what the hell they were saying, I made a
mental note to study
Korean for longer amounts of time on a more regular
basis.
The
doctor wasn't quite sure what it was but he gave me a needle.
Immediately the itching
eased. The nurse said the needle was an
antihistamine.
They gave me 8 packages to take 4 times a day for the
next two days.
In each were 2 pink pills, 3 green ones and a black
one; actually a visually
pleasing assortment; but I didn't know exactly
what they were.
Anyhow, I followed doctor's orders (translated by the
nurse, of course).
During
the following two days, the itching would start without warning,
on various and unpredictable
parts of my anatomy for no apparent reason.
All of a sudden,
I'd be voraciously itchy on my back; the next time, it
would start on my
butt; the next time on my neck. At these times,
I
would pop a package
and the itchy bitchy would stop. Of course, I
monitored what I
was doing, eating, and wearing just before the monster
returned. No
pattern emerged.
One
experience during those next two days will never leave my memory.
I'd taken a package
of pills before departing for Haeundae. No problem
- I accomplished
my mission in Haeundae and the itching remained at bay.
It's a good thing
as I'd forgotten to bring extra pills with me just in
case.
On
the way home, however, sitting on a crowded bus, and grateful
to have
gotten a seat, my
feet started itching beyond control. Inside my shoes,
I wiggled my toes
against one another and against the leather of my
faithful Doc Martins,
trying to create enough friction to ease the itch.
Unsuccessfully.
It was thoroughly agonizing. My toes were SO ITCHY, if
someone had offered
to chop them off, I'd have said "YES PLEASE!!" It
took all my gumption
to not take off my shoes and socks right there and
then, in the midst
of a crowded bus of Koreans.
Now
you have to understand the bus scene. There's no disguising
your
foreign identity
anywhere in this city but least of all on a jam-packed
vessel. You're
larger than average size, with hair and eyes lighter
than everyone else's,
different clothes, wider eyes, etc. You're a
freak from the word
"go." People constantly stare. Simply by being
normal, you're an
oddity. So, I was thinking, woah, if I take my socks
and shoes off, start
itching and groaning like a wildebeast, it's going
to be a full-fledged
freak show.
Had
I been in Canada, I would have done it and gladly incurred the
looks
of disbelief and
disgust because my toes were SO FARGING ITCHY!!! The
itchiness consumed
my whole being. Sitting there on the bus, I wanted
to say to one of
those Koreans who kept looking at me, "Don't just stand
there and stare -
scratch my toes!!!"
I thought
of sticking my pen in there and trying to scratch my toes but
no ... even a pen
wouldn't reach. I'd still have to take off my shoes.
No, I couldn't uncover
my feet and and scratch. Not here. So I
continued to wiggle
and wiggle my toes inside the shoes. It was pure
torture. I
was starting to breathe deeply and had to suppress groans of
itch agony.
Somehow I endured that 40-minute bus ride, which seemed
more like a 40-hour
stint in a torture chamber. HIDEOUS, it was!!!
When
I got off the bus in Pansong, I ran hard, pounding my feet on
the
pavement to create
at least a bit of friction on my feet. I was just so
glad to be off the
bus and able to do something with my feet other than
wish they weren't
attached to my body. I ran straight to the Pansong
Medical Clinic.
The English-speaking nurse thought it funny that I
couldn't stand still;
that I was stomping my feet and looking at her
with such intense
desperation. She said they could do nothing for me at
the clinic and advised
me to see a dermatologist. I was convinced that
it was an allergic
reaction and didn't see what a dermatologist could do
for me. But
then, what did I know? Anyhow, I ran home, pounding those
Doc Martins mercilessly
the whole way.
At
home I scarfed down the second-last package of pills.
And in about
10 minutes ... aaahhhhh
.... sweet relief. That night, while playing on
the computer with
Liane and Jeff, I said, "AHHHHHHhhhhhh ... I can't
take it anymore ...
I have to scratch!!!!" They didn't know what I was
talking about.
I had mentioned that I'd had an itch and gotten
medication for it
but they didn't know the extent of the problem. So I
showed them my back.
They said, "You have to get help - tomorrow."
Luckily, a dermatologist
had recently advertised on Pusan Web. Jeff
said Dr. Choi spoke
very good English and sounded like a good guy over
the phone.
I had
one last package of colourful pills to see me through the night.
The next morning,
"the itch" resumed with a vengeance. I made tracks to
Dr. Choi's office.
Don't
get the impression that getting there was an easy task.
Beforehand, I called
the office for directions. The secretary answered
the phone in the
most pleasant Korean manner, but could speak only 2
words of English:
wait please. After about 10 minutes, Dr. Choi came on
the line. He
spoke really good English and didn't seem to mind taking
the time to help
out a foreigner. Thank goodness. He gave me
directions to his
office. That in itself took 10 minutes. Here in
Pusan, you can't
just give an address because there are no street names
or street numbers.
So, to get accurate directions, basically you have
to record a mini-novel.
I took
the bus he'd recommended but wasn't sure where to get off.
When
I finally did get
off, I asked a few people where this particular
building was but
neither they nor I had any idea of where the hell it
was or what it looked
like or what it was near. Feeling helpless, I
hailed a cab.
Thankfully the driver spoke some English. If it weren't
for the cab drivers
in this city, we foreigners would be totally up the
creek without a paddle.
He got me pretty close and pointed in the
direction I should
walk. I searched for only a short time before
locating the office.
The
office was full on this Saturday afternoon but people went through
quickly and I was
soon face-to-face with Dr. Choi. He was a really good
guy. I gave
him the scoop on the last few days as well as the trip to
Thailand. He
said it sounded like a disease called "Utucaliu."
I thought
he was saying "Earth Carrier" because the Korean language does
not include the "th"
or the "r" sound. The "r" sound is ignored at the
end of words and
the "th" sound is generally not enunciated at all or
comes out as "ss".
"L" and "r" are interchangeable. So I thought, "It's
a disease called
Earth Carrier". It even seemed logical . I'd been
traveling about the
earth, from Canada to Korea to Thailand to Korea.
I figured I must
have picked up something in Thailand. So I wrote down
on a piece of paper,
"Earth Carrier" He said "No. Utucaliu" and went
on to explain it.
His description of the disease matched my symptoms.
He said it was a
strange disease in that it would appear unpredictably,
for no apparent reason,
on different areas of the body. There was no
pattern with regard
to where and when it manifests itself; it would
suddenly disappear
from one area and perhaps soon appear elsewhere on
the body. Yep,
he seemed to have it pin-pointed. Then he gave me an
English medical manual
and pointed to "Urticaria." Ohhhhh ...
Urticaria!
He was saying it after all! Ha - Earth Carrier - not.
Dr.
Choi gave me time to read about the disease while he saw another
patient. I
was again grateful to be able to read about the disease in
English. The
pictures were identical to what was on my body; the
descriptions exactly
what I'd experienced. The book said this disease
was usually onset
by the ingestion of a substance foreign to the body
that disturbs the
body's chemical balance. It could, however, also
be
instigated by exposure
to extreme temperatures. I asked him about this,
explaining that it
had been very hot in Thailand (30+ degrees celsius on
most days).
So maybe that's what had started it. But he said, "No."
Had the itching begun
the day I returned to Korea he would have held
that as a strong
possibility. But given that the itching began a day
and a half after
coming back, he concluded that it was something I'd
eaten or drunk since
coming back to Korea. The manual said that 17-23%
of the population
gets Urticaria at some point in their life. I don't
know about that
because anyone I've told about this has never heard of
it, let alone contracted
it.
Dr.
Choi gave me medication to take for the next 10 days.
Since then,
the disease has not
returned so I hope it's gone for good. He said that
if it's treated in
the acute stage, i.e., during the first 6 weeks of
contraction, it can
be successfully treated. But if a person does not
receive treatment
in those first 6 weeks, Urticaria becomes malignant.
Can you imagine that
- going through your life and all of a sudden going
crazy with the urge
to itch? I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Why?
Because it's a BITCH
of an ITCH.
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