Several creams, anesthetics, and treatments were tried, and nothing worked. OCD meds, bandaging her hands up, nothing stopped the itch nor her scratching.
:eek:
Wait, that’s not quite accurate enough.
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
I mean, to her brain? How can someone’s fingernails possibly get all the way through the skull? shudder
But beyond that, the article is a fascinating read. It delves into reasons why people get persistent itches, pains, phantom limbs, and that sort of thing. I highly recommend reading it all the way through.
Okay, now that that’s over with, how the hell can you scratch through your freakin’ skull? Keratin is a hell of a lot weaker than bone; given a wear contest between the two, you’d be scratching with bloody nubs that were once fingertips before you made a dent in the bone – unless she had one hell of a chronic case of osteoporosis and a severe calcium deficiency or something else that made the bone very weak and/or thin, 'cos you just can’t go trepanning armed only with your own fingers.
A) She had a permanent wound on her head from scratching that exact same spot that was always kept open and never allowed to heal over – though possibly healed such that the bone just remained exposed;
B) She was scratching bone, knew she was scratching bone, and kept scratching anyway;
C) Remained completely unaware that, over time, she was boring a hole in her freakin’ skull, as if she couldn’t feel the well she was digging – or could and still kept at it anyway; and
D) Never saw a doctor the whole time, or the doctor she did see completely missed the growing hole in her skull.
Although I realize that this is the definition of irrational, how could scratching exposed bone possibly provide any kind of relief? There are no nerves in bone, nothing to send a signal to the brain to tell it that something is making contact. Except for the bone-conducting sound and minor vibrations that nerves in nearby skin would pick up from the scratching action, it would more or less feel like scratching a slab of treated concrete. Given that one scratches to relieve an itch, even a phantom itch, one would think someone would want to scratch an area where there’s some sensation to give them a feeling of relief.
I guess I’m just having trouble understanding how even an irrational desire to scratch could possibly be of any relief when the area being scratched offers no physical feedback from the act. It would make more sense if it was an absent nervous habit or something – like picking at scabs or dead skin or biting the inside of your cheek or something, only extremely hardcore.
You’d think, but something like this just beggars belief, at least without further detail.
I, too, think that the article is missing some details, but I’m betting that the basic narrative is accurate. Three things you’re missing:
The full article specifies that the itchy part of her head was otherwise completely numb (no sensation of touch, no pain when poked, no nothing).
She attempted to stop scratching during the day, but most of the damage happened in her sleep.
The whole point of the article was that some people legitimately feel sensations with little or no physical input, so persistent itching and scratching of a numb area wasn’t necessarily related to anything physical.
Perhaps – but it still doesn’t explain how doctors didn’t pick up on this and try to put a stop to it somehow. You’d think they’d see that she was gouging a hole in her head – which any doctor would consider a pretty dangerous activity – and do everything they could to put a stop to it long before she hit paydirt, as it were.
Since scalp wounds bleed heavily this just doesn’t ring true that she scratched a hole in her skull to her brain. she would have been covered in blood long before she would have gotten to brain, probably even died of blood loss.
It seems like some sort of obsessive compulsive order. People that have it bad can’t stop themselves and it can be a compulsion to do something they know is harmful. I’ll have to file lady this with the guy who’s skull at the top of his head fell off.
The part* I can’t make sense of is the “greenish liquid”. Isn’t cerebrospinal fluid clear or yellowish? Green is usually an indication of infection (well, except in the gall bladder, of course!), not brains.
*ETA: I mean, the OTHER part, of course. Besides the “how the hell did she scratch through bone without her doctors noticing?!?!?” part. 'Cause the article does say she was under very frequent observation by a number of doctors.
Sorry, just skimmed the thread but it is mosquito season here.
Now, I realize that we don’t have them anywhere near as bad as other areas but the damn things zero in on me.
Ive tried lotions and sprays and creams and skin-so-soft and fabric softeners and toothpaste and
Benadryl syrup and I still end up scratching the offending skin till it bleeds and then scratch some more.
An unusual amount of blood (for such shallow skin) is pumped to the scalp. She would have been startlingly bloody before she was anywhere near through bone. And what greenish liquid pours from the skull?
The article is almost certainly either embellished, reported inaccurately, or just a flat-out hoax.
