Annie Lowry
speaker
54 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Annie Lowry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'd also thought a lot about how like you know, if you had a chronic itching support group, everybody would come into it and then just start scratching themselves and then make everybody else itchier by being in the simple presence of people who were itchy. So I don't know. But it's something that, you know, people suffer through alone. It's kind of embarrassing.
And it's been so nice since the piece came out to get, I got a lot of emails from people suggesting lotion. And I was like, okay, thank you. Thank you for that. But then I got a lot of emails from people who were like, people don't believe me, but I've been itchy and they don't know what it is and I feel so alone. Or I have this cancer and it makes me itchy and it drives me completely nuts.
And so it was really nice to get responses from people who didn't want to be alone and do have some trouble conveying to folks just how hard it can be. And this is not to, you know, there's no misery Olympics here. I'm not saying like pain is awful. Itching is awful. It's just that sometimes I think itch is not respected.
It says, yes, I have tried lotions. So people, when you say that you're itchy, I think they kindly assume it's a dermatologic thing. And they're like, oh, yeah, I was itchy, too. And I tried this lotion and you should try this lotion. And I try not to get short with those people because they are trying to be helpful.
But I'm like, I'm not saying I've tried everything, but I've tried a lot of things. Like I'm an expert in my own itch at this point. And if Userin fixed it, I can assure you that I wouldn't be experiencing it. But people are trying to be nice. And so I try to be nice back. I don't know that I succeed at that all the time.
Yeah, I try not to talk to people when that happens. I guess in some ways it's nice that usually when I'm really itchy, it's at night, like in the middle of the night. Because, you know, during the daytime, it would be pretty unusual for me to be severely itchy now. That was not true when I was pregnant so much. But now it's like the sun starts to go down.
I'm leaving the office so I can go hide in my house if I'm itchy. You know, so for the past week that I've been itchy, it's mostly it's been at night. And I just excuse myself because it's just like sometimes I'll subtly try to scratch my head or scratch my feet or something. But it's noticeable. People kind of pick up on it. It's like not a cool thing to do socially.
I think it leads to a sense of disquiet in the person that you're talking to. And then they end up scratching themselves. You've just you've allowed your itch to become contagious. Yeah.
I often sort of tell it to shut up. I'm often like, I know, I know I'm itchy. You can stop it. I know. I don't need to itch. I don't need to be scratching. I don't know why it's happening, but it could stop and we'd be fine. There's no point to my itching. It's not helping me get something off of my skin. It's just interrupting. Yeah. Thank you so much.
So many people come to better terms with that. And I always want to be careful to note, like, it's, you know, I don't think that illness is any kind of gift. And I don't think that there needs to be upsides to bad things happening to people at all. But I do appreciate the insight that I've had into myself, even if I wish that I never had occasion to have it.
Just like you can endure a lot. Your body is going to fail you. You know, it can feel completely crazy making and obsessive and miserable and you can survive it. You can just keep on breathing through it. You can do really amazing, wonderful things. And again, that's not to say I think that it's worth it or that I'm taking the right lesson away from it.
I really often just try to be like, not everything needs to be a lesson. You don't need to respond to things that are unfair and difficult in this fashion. But writing the piece led me to a much greater place of acceptance, and I really appreciated that.
I'm so sorry. Especially the people who are always itchy. I'm really sorry. I hope you turned this off the second you heard it. You're like, nope, not me, not today.
I hope so. I hope so. And it is all of us. All of us. It's yeah, it's not as common as chronic pain, but chronic itch is really common and everybody is itchy at some point.
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