Who knew my own skin could be so uncomfortable?

Okay, so I haven't blogged for a week or three, because I was busy being busy being sick.  My skin just turned on me.  After the bugs, I gave myself a severe allergic reaction to topical sulfur and an MSM supplement (an organic form of sulfur that you supposedly cannot be allergic to -- oops, not true) and was just in agony with that stuff (my neck swelled up to the size of about three linebackers on 'roids).  Then on top of that I got old white men's disease -- Grover's disease, which means that my skin can't hold itself together any more and I have an itchy rash on my neck and torso and limbs that gets worse if I get hot and/or sweat (so this is either a great excuse not to work out, or a serious blow to my exercise plans).  Like I needed another itchy frickin' rash.  And they don't know what causes it (the insult of burning myself inside and out with sulfur might have had something to do with it, or it might have been the drugs for the bugs, or maybe all the hot baths I was taking for the bugs, or I might have defective or plugged up sweat glands -- frickin' who knows), and there is no cure for it.  And it can last 10-12 months, or go on for years.  Just my luck.  But hey, I lived with my good friend Itchy Rash of Unknown Origin (atopic dermatitis) for 2.5 years before the bugs happened, so I can deal.  So far, my research reveals that Vitamin A is about the only known treatment for it.  So I'm all Vitamin A'd up.  (Trivia -- your body creates Vitamin A from Beta Carotene -- who knew?)  Now if I could only sleep for more than 2 hours at a time -- I wake up itching like a son of beech.  Basically I haven't slept an entire night since early February.  But I'm optimistic that it will improve -- I mean it can't get worse, and at least I don't have bugs any more.  I think.  Oh, and I got some TOTALLY kick ass Old Gringo boots last night.  So things are looking up.

So, this has all kind of set back my mid-life get-my-ass-in-shape-and-write-a-funny-blog-about-it program.  On the up side, I did get down to 105.  But then the dermatologist gave me large doses of 'roids (I've never met a dermatologist who didn't think that steroids were the answer to each and every skin problem, and I've never had steroids actually fix any problem.  Ever.  Although I will admit I was pretty happy with them the day I had about 4 layers of hives all over me.)  And  about 11 days into my 10-day steroid program, duh, I finally realized why I was eating everything that wasn't nailed down.  And that lasted at least two weeks (hell, I'm STILL hungry), and totally blew my big weight loss victory -- the one good thing that came from the whole bug ordeal, blown to bits by 20 tiny steroids tablets.  I hate dermatologists AND steroids.  So I'm probably back up to 110 -- I haven't checked yet, because I finally just left town and went skiing for a week.  Oh, and note to my dermatologist -- sun exposure (which he recommended) can actually exacerbate Grover's (kind of a crap shoot I guess -- might help, might hurt).  My face got all red, swollen, blistery, and, yes, even itchy, despite SPF 30.  So my joy continues.  I took two days off to let my face heal a bit, but couldn't resist getting one last afternoon of skiing in -- final day of the season for me.  AND it was GOOD.

Here's the photo of my happy, sore, cold face.  Pretty, NO?

Hang on, got to get some liquid sedative....

So tomorrow, I'm back to Phoenix and reality and trying to get back to normal -- at least I'm not washing everything every day any more.  I.  Re.  Fuse.  Looking forward to opening the Amazon purchases that I got myself last week and catching up with my friends and neighbors.  What up?!  to Luane and Rhonda, who have been doing a boot camp at the Y every morning at like 6 am or something even more insane and doing it for like 2-3 weeks.  OUCH.  My hat is off, ladies.  My butt remains in bed at that hour, but my hat is way off.

Next week:  Maybe I take P90X out of the box?  It could happen.