"Only if you're bleeding to death..."

Warning: This entry might fall into the "too much information" category for my more casual friends.

For many years now, I've struggled with an impulse control problem known as Compulsive Skin Picking. This happens when you have sensitive skin, which gets irritated easily, and then you scratch, and then it forms a scab. And then you pick the scab over and over again until it's kind of monstrous looking; it leaves a scar when it goes away. This is one of the reasons I can't have sex. (The other is I'm overweight.) I can't even wear shorts in the summer time because you just see this canvas of scabs for my legs. This disorder falls into a subcategory of OCD. There are support groups, but I've never gone to any.

About a week ago, just days before my new play, Costa Rehab was set to open, I got a pimple on my chest. I picked at it. It got worse. When it became painful, I went to the doctor (not my Primary Care Physician because he was on vacation) and he said just to use hot compresses and try to drain it. So that's what I did. My mom's friend had an old remedy that she used which involved pouring hot milk over bread and wrapping it around a cloth, and firmly pressing on the wound until it gets cold. I did this several times (I thought it would make a great song title, or photo essay, "Matt's Milky Poultice"), and also applied a topical cream recommended by the doctor.

Alas, it became time for my show to open and I was practically useless to my cast and crew because I was beside myself with pain, and I didn't have much in the way of pain meds to get through it. And we had an absolutely dismal opening weekend, with almost no one showing up, and that sort of added insult to my injury, but pain makes you care more about the injury.

But I got through opening weekend and ended up going to the emergency room today, because the thing didn't get better, it got worse. So I waited in the waiting room for over an hour. Then I waited in the exam room for over an hour, with a splitting headache on top of my burning chest abscess. Then the handsome doctor comes halfway through the door, but before even looking at me, he turns back to the hall to complete a conversation he'd been having with someone else: "They only do it if you're bleeding to death!" Then he entered and said hi, and told me what we would do.

Him and the nurses came and went several times, with huge time intervals in between. The thing got "numbed" with several little shots, then I waited some more, then the wound was dug into and prodded and squeezed like a MOFO, then I waited some more for it to be dressed by the nurse. I came away with an antibiotic and pain medication, but not the pain medication I wanted. Worst of all, I have to keep hot pressing and squeezing the bastard 3 times a day for the next couple days.

And the moral of the story is...Don't skin pick. Yeah right. Like anyone in the world knows how to stop doing the things that are bad for them!