My marriage gives me a burning, bubbling, red-hot rash

I have been happily married for the last seven years and had been dating my husband for six years before that.  It took thirteen years for this fairy tale love to make my skin crawl.  Literally.  And I hate the word literally.

The redness came first.  Then the bubbles, raised into scales between my fingers.  In time, these bubbles burst open and dried out like scorched earth, making room for the burn that seared through my skin at any slight movement.

My wedding rings had turned on me.

I spent too much time on the internet, trying to diagnose myself.  All signs pointed to wedding ring finger cancer.  Obviously.  Either that or my 30 second bathroom breaks between classes weren’t allowing me to dry my hands thoroughly enough.  Or my children had caused my body to turn on me and I’m now allergic to most everything in life.  (I’m betting on the latter.)

So today, I took the obvious course of action.  I spent precious moments of a glorious day off of work at the jewelers.  Apparently, if you don’t get your jewelry cleaned and replated for the entire length of your marriage, things have a tendency to go wrong.  (They offer this service for free every two years, you know.  No.  I did not know.)

Now the most humorous part of this entire scenario occurred as I was playing sleuth with the kind saleswoman.  It would take them at least two weeks to fix everything up for me - but lucky for me, my oh so delicate fingers needed that time to heal anyway.  She asked me if I had had problems with any of my other jewelry, or just the wedding rings - which made me giggle ever so slightly.  I explained to her that jewelry was not really my thing.  Maybe if I could curl up and read a good pair of earrings things would be different.  Her next recommendation was to “throw on” another gold ring on the other hand in the meantime, to see what reaction I might have with the metal on my skin.  Another gold ring you say?  Number one, I don’t have one - we seem to have overlooked the “jewelry’s not my thing” comment.  And number two, why on earth would I want to subject myself to the boiling, bubbling, burning, blisters on my good hand?  The one I write with.  The one that turns pages.  The one that has to feed small children.

We’ll see how the cleaning goes.  Maybe my life has just been so filled with the germs of my toddlers, that they’re growing teeth and eating me alive.

Until then, I’ll be fighting the boyfriends off with a stick while I’m without my rings for two weeks.  Translation:  I’ll be at home changing diapers, and hoping I get to wash my hair THREE times this week.