All's Welts That Is Welts

Two fridays ago I woke up with bumps on my hands. They were ugly and itched like the dickens, so I thought that a spider had noshed on me during the night. I'm pretty sensitive to bug bites anyway--a bee sting can swell me up for days--so I didn't think much of it.

The trick is, they haven't gone away. I went to the doctor Thursday and she was baffled. I haven't changed soaps, I haven't eaten anything unusual, we're still using the same laundry detergent as always, and (at the time) it was only my hands, so....what is it? I was a little worried because the same pain I was feeling in my finger joints was making it's way up to my elbows, and that didn't seem right at all. She decided we should monitor it for a while, gave me a perscription for an antibiotic, and told me to call back in a week.

Then Saturday morning I wake up on fire. The damn things had only been on my hands, but now my entire scalp line was one long series of ugly red bumps. The bumps on my hands had grown into welts, and my toes were starting to itch too. This morning I went to the doc-in-a-box that Group Health covers and the doctor gave me a bunch more options: scabies, lingering effects of a strep infection, a really nasty cold making my body do wierd things, stress and lack of sleep, or an allergy.

The stress theory interests me, if only because I can see the changes in my body as soon as the school year starts. Sleeping becomes harder, my hair becomes a lot thinner, and headaches get a lot more frequent. Throw a new baby into the picture and I could see things going haywire.

On the other hand, I don't really feel stressed. I'm not a high-stress guy by nature, but maybe I internalize more than I know.

I think the solution may be either exercise or heavy drinking. I'm leaning towards drinking, because exercise sucks.