Rash on leg...

[sytech]

Just got back from Cozumel last week. Was diving with 3mm shorty. Have purplish type rash, itchy in spots. Got the same thing on my wrist last year.

I would bet you came into contact with fire coral. It takes several months to go away. I didn't see a Dermatologist but applied hydrocortisone cream as well as using Benadryl cream. I think the latter works better but no great shakes. I'm sure it will last a few months and them vanish.

Sy

All right. Laugh at me... Stinking dermatologist and physician, and can't diagnose his own rash!!

Heck, the only way we learn is from others, our patients, and our colleages...

Anyhow, went to cozumel in Jan. Wearing shorts, and just right under the shorts, about 3 inches above the knees, a curvilinear group of itchy red papules. Just like a row of mosquito bites.

My guess is it is either an insect bite I got on dryland (spider) or some aquatic insects.

Anyhow, I do not think it is sea lice, as the attack seems to be from one organism (bite, move, bite, move, bite, move), rather than a linear stinging colony (man of war).

Anyhow, it itched like mad the first 2 weeks and responded well to a strong topical steroid.

But it is 3 months later, and they are still there, although alot smaller.

My diagnosis is persistant insect bite reaction, likely to an arthropod (spider?). But willing to take input from anyone, physician or non-physicians. As a dermatologist, I definitely can tell you a biopsy will not help - it would just come back as suggestive of hypersensitivity or insect bite reaction.

 

[sytech]

Have gotten bedbug bites even in "nice" hotels. They are small and itchy but localized.

What I do now is when I check into a hotel and have bites in the morning I take my insect repellant cream (with DEET) and put it all around the edges of the mattress. Seems to work.

Sy

buggers=bedbug?! Understandable, if the rooms are kept up to speed....I wouldn't have thought of that.

Also, it could have been jelly fish stingers (cnidoblasts). I had that happen to me swimming on the Jersey shore, particularly after a storm. It felt like a million needles all over my body. I'm not sure of a rational explaination for this though.

 

[gert7to3]

Were you sitting on any rattan furniture? In the tropics, rattan furniture can often be infested with mites. They can leave linear arrays of itchy welts upon unprotected skin across your upper legs and posterior. Be happy you wore shorts and not a man thong.