Last week I woke up in the night with my heart pounding out of my chest.  I laid there thinking “eventually this is going to stop”.. and it did.  It took quite a while, longer than I felt was normal but I went on back to sleep and didn’t think any more of it.  The next day I’m walking around the house, cleaning up and I feel my heart skip.  I pause for a second and then go about my business.  A few minutes later, another skip.  Hummm.  So I go about my day and occasionally I get these skips - I try to ignore them for the most part but there were times when I’d have 2 or 3 in a row.  Ok, THAT scared me.  Everyone has PVC’s (skipped beats) and most people don’t feel them.  Some people do and compare them to “butterflies” or something similar.  I was born with sinus arrhythmia.  This is a benign condition and doesn’t hurt anything.  Basically my lung capacity is quite large and when I breathe in, my heart feels that the expansion in my chest is an obstacle and in turn it speeds up to push the blood through, when I exhale, the expansion is deflated and my heart says “oh cool, take a break” so it stops for a second or two and then beats normally again - until I inhale and then the cycle starts all over.  I never feel this stuff, unless I have my fingers on my wrist or neck.  These PVC’s I can feel.  When my heart is bounding at 120 - 130 beats a minute, I can feel that too.  I don’t like it.  I thought at first it was the atarax because it can play around with the cardiovascular system, so, I stopped taking it.  The itch is horrid but sudden death is worse, you know?  I saw my doc about it yesterday and he sent me to radiology for a holter monitor.  I was assured the tape they used to hold the electrodes on my body was “hypo allergenic” but apparently my skin doesn’t care.  I itched ALL NIGHT LONG.  My chest was driving me crazy and I had hives under the tape and it was just maddening.  I had to wear the monitor for a full 24 hours and I swear I did it for my kids.  There’s no way I could have left that tape on for 24 hours if it wasn’t for them.

Anyway, I’ll find out the results of the holter on Wednesday.

I saw the dermatologist on Wednesday for the itchies I’ve had.  I swear I thought he could give me a cure or an answer to why or how.  Dermographism.  In literal terms it means “skin writing”.   There’s no known reason and the causes are questionable.  I think it can be different for everyone that has it and I believe that number is 2% to 6% of the population.  Not the answer I was looking for.  It can go away with time or I could have it forever.  There’s different meds to treat it with like Claritin or Benadryl and an assortment of prescriptions.  I can also use steroidal creams like Cortizone. 

I’d rather not have to do any of that..  I just hate meds.  All kinds.  How did this dermographism catch me?

This was done with an empty ballpoint pen.  I just wrote the word “how” as if I were writing on paper.  Not abrasively or hard enough to scratch myself.  Within 2 minutes the hives were itching so bad I could have screamed.  The writing disappears within a couple of hours.  So, now I have to try extremely hard not to scratch any part of my body with anything like my fingernails or back scratchers or any other common items used for that purpose.  Everywhere I scratch becomes covered in hives.  Horrible this stuff is.  Just torture.