How to go insane

Last weekend Dragon Lady and I went to Seven Peaks with some of her good friends. I don't know why, but I've always had a slight "macho" complex when it comes to sunscreen; I delude myself that I'll just get a nice tan despite my pasty-white hasn't-seen-the-sun-in-a-year skin. In case you were wondering, it's not true. I got burnt like a redneck piece of toast.

Having a sunburn is never fun, but the first couple days were at least bearable. I mean, it hurt when I slid my arm into my backpack, and my shoulders protested whenever I reached for a glass from the cupboard, but it was bearable as long as I was careful with it. On Monday night, though, as I was just about to go to bed, things got a whole lot worse.

It started with a sharp itch in my shoulder.  Since scratching a sunburn isn't a whole lot of fun, I left it alone, hoping it would go away.  It didn't.  It spread down my upper arm and started crawling down my chest.  I decided that it was definitely time to go to bed, before things got any worse.  I put some aloe vera on, hoping it would help the burn stop itching, and crawled into bed.

Getting into bed didn't really help anything, though.  The sheets of my bed were just scratchy enough to aggravate the rest of me, and before long my entire upper body was itching.  And this wasn't just a light itch; this was a jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding, back-arching kind of itch.  I tried to lie still, since any movement started a new fire on my skin, but even breathing was too much.  After about 20 minutes of agony, I jumped into the shower, hoping that water might calm the itch.  It calmed it a little, but not enough for me to be anywhere near comfortable.  At about 1:00 AM I decided that I couldn't justify staying up that late anymore, even if I did itch like crazy, so I got out.

The problem with taking a shower while you're sunburned is that you have to use a towel afterward to dry off.  And hotel towels, being washed and rewashed, are not known for their softness.  Within 30 seconds of getting out of the shower, I itched worse than ever.  I was pacing back and forth in my hotel room, trying to hold in a scream as there was simply nothing I could do beyond praying for relief.  (Which I did, don't worry.)  I finally got back in bed, (since pacing wasn't doing any good,) and steeled myself to bear the awful burning.  I tried to focus my attention on some non-itching area of my body (my big toe), but it didn't help much.  I was burning, itching, dying for relief.  If you've read Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, you'll understand what I mean when I say that I felt about like Bella did during a certain rather-painful event in the middle of the book.

I nearly went insane.  I would have given a lot to be able to get out of my head for a while.  It was just that excruciating.  I told Dragon Lady I'd been itching, and she told me that it was good.  That it meant I was healing.

"Good."

Maybe it was healing, but you'd think my body could come up with a less-agonizing method of repairing skin damage.  Having healed skin wouldn't have helped much if I'd gone insane and jumped out the window.  And really, it wasn't that far off.

Moral of the story: Use sunscreen.  Really.