Skin

It's time to record more medical information so that my family knows what I am going through, but also to preserveit for future generations who may have similar issues.

Something is wrong with my skin.  

There was an interaction with my hair.   I would get ingrown hairs alot, always have.   I tried to end it with frequent washing, that did not help, even with medical grade soaps.  I noticed this happened more when I let my hair grow longer, or if I grew a beard,   I had a beard for years, but stopped because the ingrown hairs on my face were frequent and painful.

As I grew older, I started to get the ingorwn hairs on the parts of my body that were not covered up by clothes.   It was actually happening everywhere, it was just slower in the covered parts, except in at the joints, where the skin would rub againts the skin a lot as I moved, like just above the knees.   My forearms looked pock-marked, there were so many healed sores upon healed sores.

So I began to remove the hair from my body.   It is called epilating.   I have a special machine to do it.   Loks like a shaver.   It is a very slow and tedious process.   You don't get all the hair off in on pass.   Each pass only gets about 1% of all the hair passed over.   So get it all, you have to pass over it one hundred times.   It is extremely painful, especially on the head.   I am not a good candidate for laser hair removal because my skin and hair are almost the same color.   And since hair removal is considered cosmetic, it is expensive and there is no insurance coverage.

It has taken a year, but most of it is gone.  

I am keeping my eyebrows because I don't want to look like a reptile.   The eyebrows are one of the worst places, though.   I do not get ingrown hairs in the eyebrows.  But the amount of salt and dead skin that falls into my eyes is much higher thah average.  when the salt hits my eyes, it feels like acid - very painful.   So when you see I  have a moist forehead, and I am squinting or rubbing my eyes, you know why.

The salt is from my body cleansing its inner self.   It comes out with sweat.   It comes out of pores.   I generate a lot of salt.   I did NAET for awhile, and we identified salt as a big deal for me.   My hair body hair has never been healthy.   I could grab a pinch of chest hair and pull it out with not much pain.  I have been manually pulling the hair away from my groin for decades.  I think the hair that comes out easy is not as alive as the rest of the hair. 

When I seat heavily, you can see a distinct saltline in my clothes with the sweat dries.   Several times in summer months I would look at the hair in my underarms, and the hair would look WHITE.   Each strand was caked with salt.   This hair would just fall off when I tried to touch it.

Now that most of the hair is gone on my forearms, the ingrown hairs hardly ever happen.  But something new has taken its place.   I am constantly shedding skin on my forearms.   it is like I am always peeling from a sunburn.   If I rub a part of my body with my thumb, back and forth, the top layer of skin comes off very easily.   As a result, the pockmarks on my arms are almost all gone now.

I am still getting frequent sores on my forearms and legs, but they are different now.  They are scratches.   I have realized that I am scratching myself as I sleep.   I scratch my knees and thighs with my hands, and I scratch my ankles using my big toes.   I have ordereed a few pairs of cotton gloves to help with this.   The scratching happens no matter how short I cut my nails.

This is also causing problems with shaving.   I  am constantly cutting myself now, especially when I shave my head.   I shave only once or twice a week.   I have to give time for the hair to grow long enough for the epilator to be able to grab the follicles.  Today, there are at least six cuts on my head that I am waiting to coagulate to I can get dressed and go outside.

My ears create so much wax, it blocks the ear canal to the point I cannot hear.  Ear wax is either dry or wet.  Caucasians typically have wet wax.  The ENT specialist called my ear wax "soupy".   I have realized that I shed a lot of skin on my ears, and have for most of my life.  The dead skin gets funneled into the ear canal when I lay down.   I'll talk more about my ears in another blog bpost, another time.

During the day, the scratch wounds on my arm re-open, or a new one is created.   I dn't even feel this when it happens.   I just start seeing blood on my fingertips, or on the things around me, before I figure out I am bleeding.