I mentioned that I got a little sunburned at the water park last weekend. It was a decently bad sunburn, but it didn’t seem SO awful. There weren’t any blisters or anything.

I have had a few bad sunburns before in my life, and they were followed by really insane itching, so I was kind of worried about that going in. Sure enough, a few days later, the itching hit.

I am not unaccustomed to intense itching. I am extremely allergic to poison ivy and I’ve had it more times than I can count. This itching…I don’t think I can even describe it. It literally drove me out of my mind to where I couldn’t think of anything else except the itching. I ceased to be a human being. I was like an animal. Anybody who saw me would have assumed I was a crazy person. I was randomly slapping myself, hopping, twitching and making unintelligible noises. I could not be reasoned with.

I tried every remedy I could think of. I took the maximum dose of benedryl the Internet said it was safe to have. The same for Ibuprofen. If you don’t know me, then this probably seems like no big deal, but I NEVER take more than it says to take on the bottle. NEVER. I was ready to gobble down the whole bottle, if it would help. I seriously considered taking even more benedryl, even though it wasn’t safe. At the very least, I was hoping it would knock me out (since it usually makes me pretty sleepy). I rubbed aloe gel with an anti-itch medication in it all over myself. I tried a bath. Nothing was working.

Finally I discovered the only thing that worked – a shower so cold that my teeth would chatter. I think that this worked for one of two reasons, either A) I was so busy trying not to freeze to death that I couldn’t concentrate on the itching, or B) it was so cold it was making my skin go numb. Either way, this was the only thing that helped. And I mean it only helped, even in the freezing cold water I was twitching and slapping. Therefore I took a freezing cold shower for about 3 hours. A couple of times I tried to get out, only to be driven back into the shower a few minutes later. 3 hours is a long time to stand in a shower, let alone a freezing cold one.

So I am standing in the shower just sobbing my eyes out (did I mention I was out of my mind?) when Sara says, “You have to go to the emergency room.” Now this was sort of a problem. On one hand, yes, this was absolutely the worst I have ever felt in my life, so if something merited a visit to the emergency room, this was probably it. On the other hand, I felt so stupid saying, “I am sobbing in the shower because my sunburn is itchy.” I knew that nobody would take me seriously and I would be forced to wait for hours. And I knew that if I had to get out of the shower for hours, I would not be able to do it. To even think about getting out of the shower would set me to sobbing again.

So I said I wouldn’t go (wouldn’t come out of the shower in fact) but Sara eventually convinced me to talk to a doctor to at least ask if I should go. The answer was no, but by the time all of this happened I had calmed down a little bit.

One interesting thing that came up while I was talking to the doctor was that he said, “Could it be an allergic reaction?” I seized on the idea like a drowning man. The itching did feel more like an allergic reaction. Could it be? Because before that I was really hating myself thinking, “Everybody gets sunburned and they don’t turn into crazy people. Why am I? Is there something wrong with me? Am I some sort of super-pansy?” This was never confirmed one way or the other, but at least I can tell myself that it WAS some sort of allergic reaction. At least it leaves the window open for me not being a super-pansy.

I should also mention that this has happened to me twice before in my life, when I got really bad sunburns. I just kind of thought, “Well, those were when I was a kid, so I’m probably not remembering the itchiness right.” Now I would say, if anything, it was more itchy than I remember.

So the doctor said I could stay in the cold shower if that helped, so stay I did. I tried to go to bed once, but I couldn’t take it and I had to flee back to the shower. Finally it got late enough that I actually fell asleep on my feet in the freezing cold shower and almost fell over. So I ran downstairs (Sara and I agreed there was no way I could sleep in our bedroom) and fell asleep as fast I possibly could.

It worked!

I mostly slept through the night and in the morning I felt a lot better. For the rest of the day I was still super itchy, but it was manageable. If I hadn’t experienced the insanity itch the night before, I would have said this was the itchiest I had ever been, but by comparison it was nothing! At least I could function like a human.

I didn’t take a shower or put any aloe gel on or anything like that. The itchiness was just below the level where I could handle it and I was afraid that if I touched it or itched it or something, it would start to get worse and worse and I would be back to where I had been the night before. That thought scared me badly.

I feel like nobody could believe me how itchy it was. They’ll say, “Oh yeah, I’ve had itchy sunburn before, get over it” and then I think, “No way could they be talking about the same thing.” Maybe Sara will chime in and verify that I was literally out of my mind.

And speaking of Sara, thanks to all of her help in this. She got the kids into bed, called the doctor, got me things when I was in the shower, and generally took care of me. Quite honestly I’m surprised she was able to look me in the eye this morning after that pathetic showing. And she didn’t laugh at me, or at least not too much. I’m sure it was quite hysterical from the outside looking in. She didn’t even update her facebook status.

I’ll tell you one thing though, from now on it’s sunscreen city in my house. Not only would I avoid that again at all costs, but I also would never want to put anybody else through it. Consider this a PSA on my part! Forget the pain of sunburn or the skin cancer or any of those things, think of the itching!

So that’s it. Has anyone else experienced this? Did I have some form of sun poisoning or am I just a wimp?