This is really odd--I guess it proves that nothing is for free!
Last Thursday I went to get my teeth cleaned. At the dental office they always offer a hot paraffin treatment for your hands--you sit there wearing gloves that look like oven mitts while your teeth are being cleaned. I enjoyed it a lot, and my hands were really soft afterwards.
Then I woke up Thursday night because I'd been scratching my hands in my sleep! Managed to get back to sleep, but they still itched like crazy the next day on a couple of my fingers and on the heel of my right hand. Thought maybe it was a skin allergy to the paraffin or the hand lotion, so I took Benadryl, which always turns me into a drugged zombie, and I got some Benadryl cream to put on my hands. Still itched like crazy on Friday, and on Saturday actually seemed to be a little worse.
Woke up Sunday morning, and I KNEW this was not a skin allergy--called the doctor and was able to get in this afternoon. She called it cellulitis--it's an infection under the skin. She gave me an antibiotic, told me to try not to use my hands much for a few days (yeah, right!), and said the itching and pain would be better in 3-4 days. SERIOUSLY??? I'm about ready to scratch all the skin off my hands! The only thing that seems to help is getting busy with something so that I'm distracted enough to not think about it (that would be quilting, mostly!)
So I guess the lesson here is if you get a hot wax treatment for your hands, make absolutely sure than you don't have any little paper cuts to hang nails or kitty punctures on your hands, or you, too, could be driven insane by the horrible itching!