Bus Notes: Scratch these ...

So I was reading this amazing article in last week's New Yorker this weekend about a woman with an insatiable itch on the right side of her scalp. She can't stop scratching.

One 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.

So interspersed within the story of this poor woman and her poor itchy head is the story of how the study of itching baffled doctors and scientist for a very long time. Apparently, they've now discovered that the itch reflex differs from more primal, survival type responses like pain, in that the itch sensation actually triggers more sophisticated areas of the brain, including the areas responsible for emotional response and for satisfying urges and impulses (the same area that tells me to eat ten more bites of ice cream when I've already had twenty, and that tells the wino that she needs another drink). Which explains why scratching feels soooo effing good.

So anyway, (I'm about to link this back to my bus ride, I swear) what I thought was especially interesting about this story is that itching isn't necessarily connected to the need to scratch, and the way that just the thought of something itchy or creepy triggers the desire to scratch (whereas the though of sticking your face on the stovetop doesn't necessarily make your cheek sear in pain). Needless to say, I devoured this article because gore + niche-y science knowledge = my cup of tea.

And then today, today, there was a woman sitting outside of Elliott Bay Books at the 15/18 bus stop, furiously scratching her white-with-chafe feet with a dull razor blade. I was waiting there for nearly ten minutes and she didn't let up for a second; the sound of sandpaper against a cast iron pot. It was excruciating to listen to and watch, and I'm sure doubly so to actually feel. Now, an hour later, at home, I cannot kick the urge to scratch my feet and could swear (though I've not actually touched them) that they are dry and screaming out for the sweet, sweet relief my fingernails can offer. And yet there's nothing even remotely near them, save for some air.

Oi. Brains.

Oh, and the picture? I saw that keychain on top of a trash can at the 3/4 bus stop up on 12th and Jefferson. Poor Danny Sandhu ...