Itching Continues…

I am still itching like crazy…it is all over, almost all day everyday and is slowly driving me insane…I have just had to cut my nails down as far as possible for the second time because I am making sores I’m scratching so much…the doctor had given me a prescription to help the itching and it didn’t really do much…I spent an hour this morning googling itching as a symptom of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (it is most commonly associated with Hodgkin’s disease, but is a B symptom of NHL)…let’s just say that I will not be convinced the cancer is not back until I get my CT scan on the 26th (with results at a doctors appointment the following week)…I’m trying really hard not to be paranoid…not to think the worst…and not to read into anything…but this itching is not being caused by anything…I don’t have a rash, I am not allergic to anything, and nothing in my life has changed to cause it…I had intense itching about a year before I was diagnosed and we never really figured out why…I now know it was probably an early symptom of the Lymphoma so it is hard not to go ‘there’…If I do relapse it is statistically going to happen in the first 2 years…70% of people with NHL survive and 50% of people who have a relapse survive…from what I read this morning chemo the second time around is a lot more intense…I’m just getting all the bad out there so it is out of my head…I think this is one of the harder parts of remission…I’m not sure there are many people who can really understand the fear I live with, sometimes I just shut-down (I think I did that a bit this week)…I just don’t feel like it is something I can talk to anyone about….I am trying my best not to let this affect me but the fear of relapse coupled with the emotional exhaustion of itching 24/7 is wearing me down…Here is my decision on work tomorrow…I am not going to the training…I will not let them demand that I work 21hrs in a 24hr period it is not right…we will just have to figure something else out…maybe I can go to the Connersville office for the training at a later night, I go to visit a friend in Indianapolis the night before and stay a day or two to hang out…a great excuse to go see a friend and I don’t have to end up working until I am incoherent…I have also felt like I am going to throw up when I do more than walk from room to room and would rather not it get worse with pushing myself to exhaustion…so there’s that…we will see what happens eh? (I’ve always, secretly, wanted to be Canadian, my birthday is on Canada day…I think it is destiny…I would settle on marrying a man with a Canadian accent that said eh and could introduce me to a Mounty…I’m just sayn’)…O.K. going to lay back down on the couch and snuggle with the dog now…can I add that being this itchy all the time makes one VERY grumpy…I just wanna scream!!!!!