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So about a year ago, I was making a Christmas ornament (yes, I can be crafty sometimes). I was leaning my arm on the table to reach for something and it slipped on top of the ornament, breaking it. I was okay for the most part except for a piece of glass that embedded into my skin. I managed to squeeze it out (causing a nice blood flow in the process), cleaned and bandaged it, and went about my business, thinking nothing else of it. But it wasn't done with me by far.

Ever since then, I have been scratching the hell out of my forearm where the wound was. At first, it was a light itch that I would scratch for a few seconds and feel relieved. As time went by, the scratching became more and more severe. I mean, I would literally dig my nails into my arm and rip strands of skin off until it was a bloody mess. I tried cortisone and other medicaments with limited success. Finally, I went to the dermatologist.

She looked at it and informed me that I had developed a condition known as Lichen simplex chronicus, or LSC for short. Here's a little summation on it from emedicine.com:

Lichen simplex chronicus (LSC) is thickening of the skin with variable scaling that arises secondary to repetitive scratching or rubbing. LSC is not a primary process. Rather, a person senses pruritus in a specific area of skin (with or without underlying pathology) and causes mechanical trauma to the point of lichenification.

In layman's terms, I had scratched my skin so much that it grew back thicker and scalier than normal. Furthermore, and I quote my doctor since she put it so eloquently: "it likes to be scratched." It's not spreadable to other people or to other parts of my body, but it has gotten larger due the fact that I'm not exactly precise with my scratching. She gave me a prescription for a higher concentration of cortisone and told me to keep it covered. However, it has not gone away.

I went back to see the doctor a couple of days ago and she recommended that we do a biopsy. Now, I had never had one before, so I didn't exactly know what this entailed. So imagine my surprise when she punched two big freaking holes out of my skin! I was numb, so it didn't really hurt. But believe me - I felt it! Then, she had her nurse suture me up. The first hole went without a hitch, but she couldn't seem to close the second one up. For five minutes I felt her tugging and pushing through my skin to no avail. Again, it didn't hurt (at least at first - I was sore when the anesthesia wore off) but it definitely felt weird. Finally, we repositioned my arm and sewed that baby up. I go back in two weeks to get the results and have my sutures removed.

So here I am with an itchy arm with two holes in it and a condition I can hardly pronounce and I wonder: is this some sort of a cruel joke? Is this payback for some misdeed in a previous life? I mean, really, who rips their skin off and loves every minute of it (besides werewolves of course)? I'm actually hoping that they find something wrong with me so that I can have a better explanation for what's going on than my skin's extra thick and it likes to be scratched. So, until I find or am satisfied with the answer, I remain humbly in the dark once again.

Learn more about this author, Charles Depalmo.
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