winterbadger | itching and wheezing (Reply)

I don't think I either drink so much or have cut back so much suddenly that I would be having the DTs, but I hardly know what else to make of it. Lately I've become plagued by a feeling of something tickling its way over my skin, or a sudden itching like a bug bite. At first I thought I might have picked up fleas from the pets of friends that go outside, but I very carefully survey the tickly itchy bits when the feeling comes up, and there's nothing there. I've lived in a house with fleas before (our dog used to get them every summer when I was a kid), so I know well what fleabites look like, and I don't have any. A few things here and there that look like spider bites (at least, that's what we always called them when I was a kid--like chiggers, but much, much smaller--BTW, did you know, all the stuff they always told us about chiggers getting under your skin and breathing through a hole that you could seal with nail polish: totally false! By the time you see a chigger bite, the chigger is long gone.) So, it's a mystery. I notice that after I shower and right after I wear clothes I've recently washed I get itchy, so I wonder whether it's something in the water. What could I possibly do if it is?

And lately on several occasions friends and acquaintances have remarked on my being out of breath, making a joke out of it but in a way that suggests that I exhibit extreme signs of respiratory distress. I know I'm a bit out of shape, but I'm kind of surprised that they seem to think I'm so alarmingly out of breath. It seems natural to me that one would be panting a bit after trotting briskly up several flights of stairs or running up a hill to reach a meeting one is late for. I'm always out of breath when I take the stairs at work (two sets of three flights from the ground floor to my office) and when I stride briskly up the stairs in the parking garage at the end of the day (three sets of two flights). Maybe I need to go get that lung x-ray after all...

OK, time for bed. Got to sleep before 1 on Monday, maybe I can get to sleep before 12.30 tonight...