I got the worst itch of my life. It was the end of the day at my new job. I got an itch on my left shoulder. I couldn’t see a bug bite or anything, but my collarbone was now a bright red from itching. The sensation was so intense that I couldn’t focus on anything else. I had to leave work.
I drove with my left hand so that my right hand was free to scratch. My eyes started to tear up from the pain of the itch. About 15 minutes into my drive home, I couldn’t stand it anymore and pulled over at a roadside drug store. I bought a white tube of something with “Maximum-strength” in big red letters, quickly deciding the “Maximum-” is better than “Extra-” strength. I couldn’t even wait until I got out of the store. I opened the tube right at the registered and started applying. I continued rubbing in the cream on the way to the car and in the car as I started backing up. In the rear-view mirror, I could see that my entire shoulder was now a gooey white and that I had also covered a good portion of my shirt.
It seemed that the cream was working some. Not as immediately or as “Maximum”-ly as I needed, but the itched did seem to be subsiding. Still, before I went home, I made one more stop closer to home at a REALLY big chain drug-store, and purchased another variety of cream, just in case “Extra-“ was better, and also two different oral itch-medications – Benadryl and something that specifically stops histamines. Whatever those are, they do sound annoying.
As the itch coninued to lessen, I was able to focus on a few other things. Primarily, what the hell could be causing it. I remembered a story my Mom had told me of the time when her friend got a spider bite while driving back from Maine. I actually remembered that it had been from Maine, because should I go to Maine, I would be appropriately cautious. The friend had passed out in her car once, had finally driven herself to a hospital, and had narrowly escaped a venomous death. Now I don’t know what a spider bite looks like, but going with the possibility that it could be almost imperceptible in size, I decided deadly spider bite could not be ruled out.
I felt all right for the rest of the evening; never even mentioning the incident to my parents. I was living with my parents, in the house that I had grown up in. I had moved back to Boston from Seattle three months earlier. In the face of intense angst caused by even more intense unrequited love, I decided the best course of action was flight. Well, maybe not the “best,” but certainly the quickest way out. I planned to find my own plcae once I got settled into my new job. I was now officially “settled” and poised to begin the relocation phase of my return East.
I went to sleep that night in my old room. It was now a ridiculous mix of my old stuff from high school, assorted family exercise equipment, and things that just plain didn’t fit anywhere else in the house. To get to my bed or closet, I now had to sidestep barbells of various weights, slide across the weight bench, and walk around the back of a stairmaster – an effort which was ironically all the exercise I cared for. Of course, I could have relocated at least the barbells, but that would have been imlying a semi-permanent arrangement. I preferred the obstacle course.
My bed had a new bedspread. My parents’ one, and apparently only, attempt to begin a guest room transformation here. But already seemed as musty and dusty as my high school blanket and sheets that remained beneath it. The bed sagged in the middle so much now that when I lay down on my stomach, I was contorted into a sky-diving pose. And despite the dust and the sag, I felt comforted there. My koala bear, “Palmer,” from an old boyfriend, my Ewok doll “Wicket,” from a not as old as you’d think Ewok-crush, and a leopard skin-wearing monkey stolen from a former employer, all still sat the headboard. I lay in bed staring at the wooden pineapples atop each of the four posts (the bottom right one is removable and makes a nice hand-grenade during sleepover wars), and fell asleep easily remembering all of the teenage dreams that took place in that bed.
I woke around midnight with pain in my shoulder so intense that no sooner did it wake me up than I had tears in my eyes. It was an excrutiating pain the likes of which I had never felt. The pain was in the precise location on my left shoulder as the itch, but at the time, the two were such different sensations, and the pain, like the itch, was preventing thoughts of most all else, that I didn’t make the connection. I went down the hall to the bathroom and found some Tylenol in my parents medicine cabinet. I took the recommended two tablets, and two more. I went back to my room and sat on the bed in the dark waiting for the Tylenol to find its way to my shoulder. The pain was terrible. I closed my eyes and tried to bring myself out of my body and away from the pain. I had read about this working for people. I think it was part of a Zen philosophy book I had read at one time. This didn’t work.
In fact, the pain was getting worse. Much worse. To the point where I was repeating out loud, to myself, “Make it stop. Make it stop.” After maybe 30 minutes of this, and out of true desperation, because this was humiliating to do at age 27, I went to my parents’ bedroom. Their door was ajar and the room was dark. My father was snoring slightly on the near side of the bed. I walked around the end to my mother’s side. I suppose that is where I always had gone as a child because I did so now without thought.
“Mom,” I whispered. And she woke up, as I suppose she always had. “What is it?” she whispered with concern, seeing either the pain in my face or the tears in my eyes. “My shoulder hurts.” Which seemed a gross understatement, but it is virtually impossible to explain the intensity of this particular pain even under normal circumstances. There, in the dark, in my parents’ bedroom, I could only add, “It really hurts.”
Moms know the serious from the slight in the same way they know the truth from the lie. I didn’t need the right words. I was 6 years old again in my parents’ bedroom with a nightmare, or a tummy ache … or a really bad pain in my shoulder. My Mom threw back the covers and sat up. I sat down beside her on the bed and she pulled back my t-shirt to look at my shoulder and she rubbed it. “Did you take something?” “Yes, Tylenol. It isn’t helping.” And the tears started flow down my cheeks and my whole self gave in to my Mom to do something to ease the pain. My Dad was now looking at us from his side of the bed. “What’s wrong?” My Mom continued to massage my shoulder and replied to him, “Her shoulder.” And she asked me “Should we go to the hospital?” She understood how bad this was. “Yes.”
My Mom just nodded. She got out of bed and started to get dressed. I went into my room and put on my jeans with the same T-shirt I was sleeping in and put on shoes. Doing anything with the pain was like sleepwalking in a nightmare
.
My parents were talking softly in the other room. Mom said that she would take me and that she would call my Dad from the hospital. I knew he was still in bed, and half-asleep, and half-concerned. I could tell Mom was in full-concern mode, and wasa relieved. I didn’t have the energy to be concerned myself. All my energy was focused on standing the pain. And as soon as I had heard myself whisper “Yes.” to a hospital trip, I had confirmed to myself that this pain was something out of the ordinary and probably something not good.
