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I subscribe to hundreds of feeds, and read about a thousand items every day. I clip and share the most interesting ones here. Allow me to be your filter - I read so you don't have to.
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All items are copyright and belong to their original creators. I'm just sharing them here because I find them interesting.
If you want to get all of this automatically, add the feed to your favorite aggregator.
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June 26 2008
Woman who couldn't stop itching
Shared by Josh BancroftLast night I listened to a New Yorker podcast interviewing Atul Gawande, author of an article in the latest issue about itching. It's fascinating.
She SCRATCHED THROUGH HER SKULL, INTO HER BRAIN.
:-O
“Scratching is one of the sweetest gratifications of nature, and as ready at hand as any,” Montaigne wrote. “But repentance follows too annoyingly close at its heels.” For M., certainly, it did: the itching was so torturous, and the area so numb, that her scratching began to go through the skin. At a later office visit, her doctor found a silver-dollar-size patch of scalp where skin had been replaced by scab. M. tried bandaging her head, wearing caps to bed. But her fingernails would always find a way to her flesh, especially while she slept.Read "The Itch" | Listen to interview with "The Itch" author Atul GawandeOne morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.