The Devil's Itch

Yesterday, before I headed out for a run, my friend yelled out, "Remember sunscreen!"

I shouted back, "I did!" because I actually remembered to wear sunblock, and I then set off down the road and then through the desert. June in the high desert means abundant sunshine. Anyone who's met me knows I'm fair skinned. When I'm out for awhile I get rosy, and if I'm out for a bit longer I get beet red, and one time that lead to blisters and a world of hurt, but a few years back I learned the hard way about one potential side-effect to getting too much sun: The Devil's Itch.

It was after a fun weekend of camping and climbing, sans common sense and sunscreen. My chest, back, shoulders, legs, everything got roasted, and I prepared to have every inch of me freckle and peel and be tender for a few days. A few days after that weekend I was getting ready for work when I started feeling itchy. Thinking it might be just a normal itch, I unconsciously scratched at it and thought nothing of it. When every inch of my body started itching in screaming pain, I ended up on the floor in a ball hoping for it to stop, rolling around the carpet like a dog with fleas. I willed myself up and into the bathroom, took a cold shower, rubbed in some aloe vera gel after the fact, and went to work thinking, What the hell was that about?

There aren't a lot of articles on The Devil's Itch, also known as Hell's Itch, but from what I've found there isn't much reasearch on it and roughly 5 to 10 percent of people have dealt with it at some point. It manifests 24 to 72 hours after the initial burn, usually where there was the most sun (like shoulders and backs, or in my case everywhere on my lobster bod). While apparently nobody knows exactly why it happens, it can last up to a couple days and can drive a person up the walls. It's not permanent, but it absolutely leaves an impression. Like, there's a subreddit for it of people swapping experiences and remedies, which goes to show that, one, there's an internet community for everything, and two, it's pretty gnarly.

Maybe it's caused by nerve endings in the skin firing off while healing, or the oils in the skin being reintroduced into damaged tissue or something, but I don't know since I'm not a doctor or medical researcher. I'm just a guy that tends to get pink when the sun's out that learned a valuable lesson in skin care one time. When I'm out and about in the desert, especially in the warm season, I do my best to remember the SPF 50 and a hat. It'll be a miracle if I don't get some kind of skin cancer, but I'll also consider myself lucky if I don't have to experience that kind of sudden, maddening pain again.

Remember: prevention is the best medicine. Use common sense, use sunscreen, use hats and long sleeves, and maybe you'll make it through the summertime without crying and writhing on the floor from The Devil's Itch.