I can't
remember when it started, this increasing set of blotches, scales and
scabs advancing up my right ankle. I think once upon a time it was
some harmless but distinctive dark splotches about ten years ago. Day
followed day followed day, and soon, the area began to itch, a firey
insistence to dig jagged nails into the flesh and scratch.
The
satisfaction lasted barely seconds before that burning came back. I
don't know what the cause was, for once, I never thought it was due
to infection by scabies, parasites, noro-viruses seeking to reach my
intestine through my skin. I knew it was excema or psoriasis or both,
but a form so painful perhaps it had afflicted me from the stars, a
passing Andromeda Strain as envisaged by Fred Hoyle, freeze dried
alien contaminant blown in, on the space breezes, lodging itself into
my bones.
It
spread up, over the lumpy bone both up and down, onto foot and calf.
It bled raw, no matter how much cream, oil, or coal tar found its way
onto it, just like my hands, my horror gouged out hands only not just
in winter.
Parts
of it turned purple. Parts of it turned green, the unttractive green
of the mould you find on bread after a few too many days in a hot sun
in a sweating bag. Sometimes it would be hard to move the ankle, the
scales of flesh were so dry and thick. In better periods, like now,
it merely looks inflamed, witth the occasional eruption where it has
bled.
This
alien plague, et-excema, extra-excema, can only be controlled by
steroids, cortisone, betnovate, the war zone moves up and down the
botom of the limb like General Haig's front line in World War 1. But
take the steroids away and the alien skin toxin is back in a weeping
flash.
It is
not just in my head that my body is at war.
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 30.04.12
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