Anytime, Anyplace, Chiggers.

Ahh, nature. So beautiful, so serene, so full of bugs that will sneak up on you and eat you alive. Ok, so here's the deal. I had been roaming through wooded areas for unspecified reasons of necessity when it cam to my attention some days later that I had some really nasty stuff appearing my legs. I thought to myself, "Self, that stuff on your legs looks awful disturbing". "Yes self, it does". Big eww. Blistery and oozie, inflamed and itchy; my instincts said poison ivy ... wait no, too localized ... perhaps poison oak or sumac, ... perhaps.

So I show my Doc:
Me: "This concerns me."
Her: "Eww, that's gross."
Me: "Yes, it is. What do you think."
Her: "Well, skin's not my thing but here's an Rx for a corticosteroid cream, try that."
Me: "Cool, thanks."

So things don't get better and I decided to see a person who "skin is their thing". Dermatologist ahoy. So with some begging and pleading over a week, in which time this stuff has spread considerably, but let's not panic; I get an appointment, go to the office ~30mins early to fill out all my fun new patient paper work, then don't even get in to an exam room till another hour after when my appointment was for. If this were a restaurant my dinner would have been free and they would have offered me desert. Bastards, you get an F for service my dermatologically knowledgeable friend. Anyway after another 30 minutes in the exam room with my pants off (kind of necessary to see ones legs), and frickin' freezing.

Now just so we know after a 10-15 minute time when left in a room by myself, not to mention I've already been hanging out at this place for the last hour and a half prior and have read every magazine in the joint; I feel I have the right to explore. No, I did not start wandering the office with no pants on but I did start looking at all the files on the counter, (I figure it wasn't put away so it's fair game for investigation), prescription forms, brochures, all that sort of stuff, interesting reads; better than the posters on the wall which all three posters were the exact same thing. I guess they really wanted to get the fine points of sun damage prevention across. Just so you know is slip, slop, slap. Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen (at least SPF 15), and slap your ass so hard you cry like a baby ... oh wait no, slap on a hat, preferably one with a large shady brim. But, I digress.

So, I finally get to see the skexpert. (that's a skin-expert for those not friendly with made-up words) and she takes a peep at it all and we have a whopping 3 minutes conversation. ... Diagnosis, chiggerbites!

Ok, she's a doctor and I"m going to try to believe her, but chiggers? m-fing chiggers? that's it? all this about chigger bites? you're kidding right? Oh no, I have to play 20 questions on this one cause these are like no chigger bites I've ever seen. So she gives me some new stuff to put on them, will it work? who knows. 20 more questions, how often, for how many days, if it doesn't work what do I do, after how long, if it gets worse? Man it's a good thing I forced the questions out since half of them were answered as she was half way through the exam room door of her next patient. Man, and she came so highly recommended. I guess I"m selfish of her time, but hey I've sat around for 2 hours waiting to see her and pay her $20 bucks to tell me I have chigger bites the least she could do is talk to me for a whole 5 minutes, right? Well, whatever, that's the end to this tremendously long and detailed story. Later kids and watch out for chiggers!!

I think this guy has chiggers too ... I feel his pain.