PUPPP.

PUPPP. It sounds so cheerful, like maybe you get a dog at the end.

I wish.

I now have the pleasure of being one of the one-in-two-hundred pregnant women who experience PUPPP--an itchy, itchy, itchy rash that, more often than not in the past week or so, has resulted in my bleeding from my stretch marks. Go ahead, imagine what that looks like. I'll wait for you to return from the bathroom, since you will probably need to vomit.

My OB took one look at my stomach this morning, declared that I indeed had PUPPP, and brought me a prescription for Triamcinolone acetonide.

I've got this rash all over my stomach, my thighs, my butt... and, of course, my eczema has again bounded completely out of control. Basically, if parts of me are not covered in dry, scaly patches of eczema, they are covered in bloody, weepy PUPPP blisters.

I am very attractive right now.

I pointed this out to my husband while feeding and medicating the guinea pigs that live in our front room tonight. I had slathered on the steroid ointment and was doing my nightly animal care in my undies when he came out and informed me that the living room curtains were still open.

You might recall my one post where I talk about being a lingerie whore. No longer. I lost the fight last month, when I finally had to admit that my nice panties were getting stretched out by my giant ass. I bought cheap sports bras from Target to wear at night after a nightly examination proved that my boobs have sagged despite my best efforts to keep gravity away. I am now a walking underwear train wreck.

And so I told my husband that it wasn't my problem if our neighbors wanted to peep on my greased-up, fat, pregnant, rash-covered body, clad in a lime green compression bra and old, stained, hole-y panties.

Hopefully the Triamcinolone does it's job quickly. It was actually my first corticosteriod, way back in high school. I don't have much hope of it working on the eczema, but dear god I hope it works on the PUPPP. I can't take the itch, and that's saying something, because I have a lot of experience with being itchy. Clothing and bathing have become the enemy (both result in my bleeding from a million tiny flesh wounds) and I really like clothes and showers. Not only do I like clothes and showers, people seem to appreciate it when I make the effort to not smell and to cover myself in public...