GO TO BED WITH ITCHY BUTT--

Head butt, that is. Okay, so this is from the New Yorker. Don't roll your goddam eyes. When they're not reporting on flyfishing or pollution in the damn Yahtzee river, they have insane articles like this one. This woman had such an itchy head, she dug a hole in her skull while she was sleeping. Uh-oh, suddenly my balls feel itchy.

So, the article tells us most of the sensations we feel are "made up" in the brain, like you can get itchy by just thinking about being itchy. If you have a lot of nerve damage (she had shingles), or a missing limb, your brain gets so little input from the area it sometimes makes up something really bad happening. Like phantom pain, where people with a missing limb feel that limb is clenched or twisted or something similarly dire.

So what do doctors do about it? A neuroscientist in San Diego stuck people with only one arm in a mirrored box so it looked to the amputee as though they had two arms. The brain received visual input that everything was okay with that other arm, and after 6 weeks of therapy or so, the pain was gone. Jesus Christ, what will they think of next?

Okay, so the itchy chick had to be hogtied to a hospital bed for 2 years, and the neuroscientist only figured out a cure at the end of the article-- but still. I'm still trying to see how this miracle cure can be applied to me.

Okay-- mock up a mirror where I see myself surrounded by friends and laughing at parties and having great sex all day long, and stare at it for 6 weeks or longer...

Photograph by Gerald Slota, courtesy New Yorker.