THE TRUTH LIESWITHIN

May 11, 2002   Volume I  Issue 144

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Commentary

As feeling, rational beings, we are subject to all kinds of pain. There is the physical pain that we suffer from an injury or illness. Then there is the mental anguish we suffer from the heartbreak of losing a loved one. However, the most unique pain we suffer is that of the ubiquitous itch. Think about it, what else is there that is like an itch? First of all, it almost always seems to occur in a place where you can't reach like in the middle of your back, or in a place that is too embarrassing to scratch, like your crotch or your butt.

When I was nine years old, I broke my leg and had a cast on for six weeks. After a few weeks, I got an itch so bad inside the cast that I straightened out a wire coat hanger in order to snake it down the cast to try to scratch the offending and unreachable area. Itches don't hurt like other types of pain. They don't make you cry or wish you were dead, but they can drive you just as crazy.

The other unique thing about an itch is the way in which we treat it. There is an old stupid expression (as most of them are) that you must "Fight fire with fire."

The stupid part is that we all know that you don’t fight fire with fire, but rather, with water or some other flame retardant. An itch, however, is the exception to the rule, which lends truth to the lie. Most other pains we look to ease with something that will soothe them. Not so with an itch, for just as "for every pot there is a cover," for every itch there is a scratch. With an itch we do fight "fire with fire" as we try to stop an itch by scratching, which is also painful. Not only that, but we tend to scratch so hard that it hurts, often to the point of bleeding and causing a greater skin irritation than the itch did in the first place. I guess it is because an itch is so annoying and irritating, we must make sure we really get rid of it once and for all and we scratch ourselves until it hurts worse that the original itch. Or, is it just me?

As usual, I will further illustrate with some of my own unique experiences that I am just itching to tell you about. When I was a teenager, I contracted Athlete's Foot, a fungal infection that usually starts between the toes and spreads to the rest of the foot.

My father suffered with that ailment for more than thirty years, and even though it is allegedly not catching, I do believe that there is an inherited tendency to be susceptible to the fungus that causes it. I suffered in silence as a young teenager as I had no particular fondness for doctors especially when I saw that they were unable to heal my father.

The worst time was the winter when my feet would get damp from snow and sleet. When I would get home, my feet would itch so badly that I devised some torturous techniques to combat the itch. You see when you get a fungal itch, it feels like it is deep within your skin, below the surface. A mere scratching of the surface skin does nothing to relieve the torture. At first I used to rub my feet against sharp objects like the wooden edge of my footboard on my bed. I even sharpened a metal shoehorn to make a great scratching device. When the itch was between my toes, I would use a sock and saw back and forth until the skin was raw in order to seek relief. Hey, I was a stupid teenager. What did I know?

Then, one day, I hit upon a solution. My bed was next to the window and under the window was an old-fashioned steam radiator.

In the wintertime, when the heat was coming up full blast, I could rub my feet against the radiator and the heat would penetrate deep into the skin to relieve the itch. This caused several problems. First of all, I wore the paint off of the radiator, which led the parents to suspect that something was up. Secondly, the incessant scratching and burning were blistering my feet causing the skin to peel and creating even more pain. There is nothing worse than having an itch in an area that hurts to scratch. It is the ultimate "Catch-22."

The other problem was that I was sunk in the summertime, when there was no heat. In addition I walked around like a hobbled person, as my feet were raw. When the disease, not content to disable an otherwise healthy teenager, decided to spread to my crotch, the trouble really began. I now had an itch in my crotch that was driving me insane and it would happen at the most inconvenient times for scratching. So I stuck my hands in my pockets and made like those old men who are forever jingling their change. Of course, I couldn't confide in my friends for fear that they would make fun of my "elephant's crotch rot" as they were sure to call it.

In the past, whenever I sought medical help for this problem, I got the remedy-du-jour from whichever doctor we went to. Of course, they never worked. Finally, at the ripe old age of fifteen, I asked my father to take me to the doctor. He took me to a doctor who gave me a liquid called Nystaform. It stained my hands and all of my underwear and every towel that I used a bright yellow, however, it did something else that nothing ever did before. It worked. Within a few weeks I was cured, at least temporarily. In my early twenties, the disease struck my feet again. When I went to the doctor, I asked for Nystaform, since it had done the trick the first time I had used it. I was told that Nystaform was taken off of the market. I never found out why, but I imagine it had something to do with its curative powers, which is anathema to the dermatological field.

So we went back and forth with the usual ointments and creams. They worked for a while and then they made me worse. Finally, I let my future ex-mother-in-law talk me into seeing her podiatrist. I had never seen this type of doctor before and since I was suffering, I agreed to go. At first, he seemed quite tame. Before he examined my feet, his assistant had me bathe in a little whirlpool foot massager and then gave me those paper slippers that they use in the Japanese restaurants where they make you take your shoes off. Then came the treatment. He guaranteed that he could cure me from Athlete's Foot once and for all. He took me into a back room where he prepared a plastic tub with a blue liquid, which was copper sulfate. The tub had two compartments, one for each foot. I recognized copper sulfate from my days in high school when I was an assistant in the chemistry lab. He put my feet into the bath and then took two electrodes that he hooked up to an old wooden machine. It had Bakelite knobs and dials and looked like it came from the set of one of those 1930s Frankenstein movies. He set the main dial for 20 amps and the timer for twenty minutes. He told me he would be back to reverse the polarity to do the other foot when the timer reached zero.

cathode: Cu2+(aq) + 2 e- ----> Cu(s)
anode: Cu(s) ----> Cu2+(aq) + 2 e-

The idea was to fuse the copper into my skin and it would kill the fungus. I was in pain so I was game. He did say that if it hurt too much I could turn the amperage down to the point where it was bearable. He flipped the switch to "On" and left the room. I felt the electricity tingling in my foot and it did burn where the skin was raw from scratching. I so desperately wanted a cure, which he guaranteed, that I bore the pain stoically. He came back after 20 minutes and reversed the polarity and did my other foot. When I was done, my feet were blue like a Smurf and wrinkled from having been in a water bath for 40 minutes. I dried my prune-like blue feet with a towel, put on my shoes and socks and headed for home. I barely made it, as the itching from being immersed in water for so long was unbearable. I got home and yanked off my shoes and socks and headed for my radiator. Lucky for me it was winter and the heat was still on. In no time I had ripped off most of the blue skin and found that I was no better off. The podiatrist told me to come back in a week, as it would take several treatments for a cure. I did go back the following week. This time he left me in the bath for more than twenty minutes as he apparently forgot about me.

The timer on this machine did not turn it off, but was more like a glorified kitchen timer. It rang a bell when the time was up. Although I kept calling for him, it was sometime before he came back and attended to me. Since my skin was so raw from the scratching, the pain of the electricity was getting unbearable and I turned the machine way down.

On the way home, I again experienced the terrible itch and had no skin left to scratch. I decided that this man was a quack and that I was wasting my time and my money. Years later I was finally cured of this dreaded disease once and for all by a very competent dermatologist named Elliot Puritz of Smithtown, Long Island, NY.

A colleague of mine from the real estate office where I was working told me about Dr. Puritz. I was very soured on dermatologists as they usually tried one expensive medicine after another and never cured you, but made you come back week after week. Dr. Puritz was different. He even joked about dermatology stating that it was the perfect medical field to be in because, "There are no emergencies, nobody dies, and nobody gets better." That wasn't quite true in his case as he proved to be the exception to the rule.

The first thing that impressed me about this man was that he took a scraping from my foot and put it into a Petrie dish. He suspected that the reason I was not being cured was because I had a bacterial infection secondary to the fungus, which was never treated. This would explain why fungicides only provided temporary relief and the symptoms returned.

He was going to grow my fungus to confirm what it is and to rule out the possibility of my being allergic to my shoes. Here at last was a scientist in the true spirit of Marcus Welby, M.D. He prescribed three medications and  astonished me when he told me to come back in four weeks rather than the once a week visits that I had come to expect. Four weeks later I returned and was improving. He showed me the Petrie dish full of the nastiest white fuzzy crap you ever saw. Imagine, if you will, Santa Claus’ beard with split ends. This was the fungus that was growing on my feet and the root of my problem. He also confirmed that I had a secondary bacteria infection, as he suspected, and was not allergic to my shoes. He told me that I would have to take one of the medicines for one year if I wanted to cure this thing even though I would appear to be symptom free in a few weeks. He was right on all counts and he became my dermatologist for life, or until he no longer accepted my insurance as payment in full, whichever came first.

Another kind of itch that we hear a great deal about is the so-called feminine itching. How do you fight that? With feminine scratching?

It seems so contradictory as feminine implies dainty and delicate and scratching connotes cats clawing one another.

Then again, maybe it isn’t so contradictory after all. Feminine itching is usually a euphemism for the dreaded vaginal itch, which can be caused by a yeast infection. No guys, they are not baking bread down there, even though it gets a rise out of you. Yeast is a fungus and like all fungi, they grow in dark, damp, and moist places, like feet and vaginas. Women can start their own little mushroom farms down there if they so desire. Seriously though, I imagine it must be a hellish experience for a woman, not much different from what I have experienced. And, of course, they can’t go scratching it in public like we can at baseball games. The radiator thing would be totally out of the question.

Men experience a similar problem but, since men like to be macho and there is nothing more macho then sports, our version is called Jock itch, caused by another fungus that grows in dark, sweaty places. We can also get it in the rear where it is called anal itching. Of course, in my mature years,

I just had to get that disease as well. I went to a female dermatologist who used to be an associate of Dr. Puritz' and used similar methods. He no longer accepts my insurance plan and she does. Guess what treatment she prescribed for me? Hydrocortisone cream with Iodoquinol. I was told it was the successor to Nystaform and I have the yellow underwear to prove it. The nice part for the dermatologist is that the anal itch is practically incurable and will keep me coming back for years. When I told her to go scratch her ass, she told me that I would be doing the same. For many years to come, I'm afraid.

And THAT, was my two-cents plain!

Irvmeister

The artist formerly known as

Meisterzingers

I suspect that all of the prescription drugs that I am now required to take, are a direct result of all of the drugs I didn’t do in the sixties.

Mid-East for Dummies

This week’s Zinger comes from Dennis Miller. Thanks to PA Sleuth Eliot Zucker for sending it along.

A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the
Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians" weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" anymore to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs From The Same General Area Who Are In Deep Denial About Never Being Able To Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "AdjacentJew-Haters."

Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun.

No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel.They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course-that's where the real fun is-but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel-or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it-for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something. It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.

Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five
million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and
Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab state into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of
innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations coming up against Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of supermodels who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some.

After September 11 our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint. If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the
administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id...uh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.)

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Of course, that’s just our opinion and we could be wrong!

Letters to the Editor

Re: "Go Wherever the Road May Lead You!"

Irving:
A very touching and moving story and true to life. Evidently you are a good and kind person, also a great writer, as I have told you before.
Take care.
Florence Peress
Cedarhurst

Thank you very much Florence,
I really appreciate your kind words and I see I wasn't able to fool you as you have seen right through me.
Take care yourself.-(Ed.)

Irv, thanks for the wonderful tribute to Millie. I needed that today.

Juli Spurlock (Virginia's friend) now in Colorado

>^^< Juli Meeeow, Purrrrrr >^^<

None too soon, judging from the fact that the cat's got your tongue, and your e-mail as well.-(ED)

Beautiful tribute to your friend, Irv. Please accept my deepest condolences. One thing I've learned . . . losing someone you love to death is not something you get over. You just get through it. Hang onto the memories. They will sustain you.
gem

My Dear Irv,
Please accept my heartfelt condolence on the passing of your Good Friend Mildred.
The ending of the story caught me completely off guard as I had expected that you were getting remarried. What a Bummer. I went back and re read the story and really enjoyed it. Mildred is at peace now and without pain. God Bless you both. This Sunday I will say a special prayer for you both and light a candle.
Thanks for sharing.
Pete

Dear Pete,

Thanks for the kind words. Sorry to disappoint you, however, CheyAnna would not have been too thrilled with that, since I promised her first.

Hi Irv,
I loved your story today about Millie. She was so fortunate to have had you in her life! I feel that Carol also is fortunate to have you in her life.
Take care,
Carol’s Cousin Dee McCoy

That makes two of us.-(Ed.)

A moving eulogy... Brought a tear to me eye .

V. Pratt, TX

Only one eye? I must be slipping.-(Ed.)

For all you mothers or would-be mothers out there,
Happy Mother's Day

A proud member of the Net Wits, well not too proud because I joined anyway since the dues were cheap.

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