Nuisance to Report in Pregnancy

I wasn’t completely forthright when I wrote in an earlier blog that all has gone well in this pregnancy.  There is one very annoying physical ailment I have been dealing with for the last six months, which has gotten worse. I am sorry I haven’t mentioned it. I haven’t even told my doctor. It must just keep slipping my mind, or else, I just don’t want to talk about it because it is so awful. Here’s the problem: I have terrible itching on my arms and hands and feet.  It’s as if tiny insects are biting me from 10PM until I fall asleep. And I don’t fall asleep easily when I am busy itching away at my skin as if it were bark.  There are no bed bugs that I can see with the naked eye. And I have no actual bites on my ankles. So I Googled if there is anyone else having this problem who’s pregnant. And voilá, wouldn’t you know, there exists an itching epidemic for pregnant women. It’s called PUPP, which stands for pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy. That’s a mouthful. The bad news is that it lasts all pregnancy. That I know for a fact because I am experiencing it. The good news is that it apparently disappears magically after birth. Can’t wait. I feel like I’m incessantly itching away mosquito bites or poison ivy, like I’m living in the Amazon jungle. I will tell my doctor on Wednesday. Knowing him, he’ll give me the old wave of the hand, as if I’m wasting his time with such insignificant nonsense.  As you know, my doctor thinks everything is just honky dorey all the time, and that questions are superfluous.  I thought your health care provider is supposed to be inundated with questions from all of us, the newly informed and take charge patients who are taking control of our own health care. My doctor can’t be bothered with questions. He acts as if you have to be straggling into his office with gunshots or stab wounds or a disfigured face before he’d take notice and take action.  Anything less pressing than that is handled with a smile and a closing of your patient file.  Forty six year-old pregnancy falls into the category of “completely routine.”  So, to my little itching problem he will likely give me the furrowed brow look that says, “I can’t be bothered with this non-event, not even for a second. Next patient, please.”    I’ll just take my self-diagnosis of PUPP and wait out a couple more weeks in an itching frenzy. It won’t be that bad.  At least I never had to deal with vomiting or swollen ankles or nausea beyond three months.  I don’t rest through the night anyway as my frequent trips to the bathroom disallow me from more than one hour’s worth of uninterrupted sleep.  The maddening itching aside, I’m a complaint and problem-free 46 year-old, 37-week pregnant person.