So remember last summer when I told you that I’d been diagnosed with polymorphous light eruption, but I was a bit skeptical of this because the eruptions stopped sometime mid-July and I didn’t think I actually had the condition?

Yeah, now I’m pretty sure I have the condition.

It’s finally, finally warm enough up here to walk without a coat on, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the past several days. This is the first time my arms have been uncovered and in the sunlight since…man, I don’t know, September?* Yesterday night I noticed a few bumps on my upper arms that very quickly started to itch once I poked and prodded them a bit.

And today, after walking another 15 miles in sunny weather, my arms were really looking roughed up. They were getting that same rash-like landscape of red bumps that I was getting last year when I started exposing them to the sun. And they itched like crazy. These were the symptoms that led to the diagnosis last year.

I’ll be curious to see if my skin “toughens up” to the UV rays like it did last year, which is apparently a thing that happens for a lot of people with this condition. It flares up when skin is first exposed to the stronger UV lights in the spring/summer, but starts to calm down once the skin gets acclimated to the light.

Who knows? All I know right now is ITCH and BURN and WHY DOES MY SKIN HAVE THE TEXTURE OF A BASKETBALL

*We actually just tied the record of the most consecutive days without reaching 68 degrees. We reached that temperature today; we hadn’t reached it since the end of September last year. What the hell, Calgary.