Let me be your host

Bitch gave me scabies!

While I found it remarkably easy to move on after my summer romance, my skin seems to have taken it much harder. I've spent that past 2 1/2 months in the miserable hell of a scabies infestation.

While scabies isn't clinically a sexually transmitted infection/disease (STI/STD), it is most often spread through intimiate skin-to-skin contact. Therefore, I guess it counts.

After 2 1/2 months, I'm glad to know what it is. I am not, however, happy that it took 5 doctors and bumps on my junk to stress me out.

The timelines is crazy and textbook. My ex -- the walking petri dish -- left for a cruise ship job. He came back 3 months later. Early. Supposedly missing me was part of it. Intimacy resumes. A month later, he breaks it off. (Phew. Good for us all.) Within a week or two, I start getting itchy. But I have no rashing, no dry skin. Just itching.

Well, scabies infestations take 4-6 weeks to manifest the itching, which is an allergic reaction to the prescence of the burrowing mites. The mites themselves, don't cause much. It's all about the allergic reacion, which is why it seems worse in some people than in others.

I specifically remember the petri dish being really itchy before we broke up. The night before, in my car, I insisted he put on some lotion because the scratching was driving me up a wall. Little did I know what was coming my way.

At our Christmas party, the last time I really noticed the petri dish in a room (and since my itching started), I noticed him scratching himself a lot -- specifically in the areas I was scratching: the waist, the wrist and elbows, the ankles.

After I finally was diagnosed, I, of course, called the petri dish, so he could go take care of himself. "What itching?" "No, I'm not having any problems." "Must have gotten it somewhere else." "I'm fine." Likely.

The whole thing is funny to me because it has showed me what type of person I am. I don't mind talking about it because I don't have any shame in my actions. I'm 28 years old. If I want to be sexually active, that's my right. If I want to share my bed, that's normal. Unfortunately, these things come with the terroritory and there shouldn't be any shame.

I wonder how many people are spreading herpes, HPV, even scabies -- hell, not to mention things much worse like HIV -- because they are too ashamed to confront their partners?

I've had one house guest since the break-up. We talked about it and how he should consider talking to his doctor. There was no shame or blame in our conversation. Just a collective sigh-of-relief that soon I should stop it with the obnoxious itching.