Greta, as I will call her, cried out in an exasperated refrain that I had heard endless times before. “I just can’t stop scratching! Sometimes the itch is in other areas, but mostly it’s down there.” She pointed to a place on her lower back. “I have to claw at it all the time, and it doesn’t ease up. It’s a different kind of itch, like I’m getting eaten up on the inside.” I examined the area, but it was remarkable only for its scratch marks.
I reviewed her history. No diabetes, no recent bites, no hives, no recent infections, no new drugs or allergies, and no change in her emotional state that might account for this malady. Greta also said she had no liver, gall bladder, or kidney disease. She was not a drinker, smoker, or drug user. She had suffered with this persistent itch for almost a year and had never had any symptoms like it before.
For the first few months that she experienced the itch, she was pregnant with her second child. “This didn’t happen the first time. I figured maybe it was just something that happens. But then after I had the baby it kept going on,” she said.
