Skins

I sometimes wonder what climate I could live in that would allow my skin to be calm and happy. The fall, winter, and spring, I am plagued by eczema and need to keep my skin moist and on the 'roids. But now in the summer when you'd think between the heat and air conditioning skin would crave moisture, it seems the only thing that keeps my less (not not, but less) itchy is absolute dryness.

The itchies are so bad that I can't sleep well. I stopped moisturizing and started covering my self in a thick cloud of baby powder. I went to the dermatologist today. I'd been rehearsing in my head my symptoms. How my skin looks, feels, when it comes and goes, my home remedy (the baby powder), etc. Of course when I get there my skin isn't bumpy and itchy. He asks what I'm therefore. I say a refill on my eczema cream and I've been getting these new itchy bumps on my legs that's not eczema and is bad at night. Somehow he writes me a prescription and says it might be inflamed hair follicles and sends me on my way without my realizing that I didn't even get into my whole rehearsed spiel.

So I'm waiting for my prescription now. The doc said to use it as much as I want and if it doesn't work to come back for another prescription.

I don't share all this because the guy's a bad doctor. Previous visits have gone well and he's good with checking my moles and such. But I left today feeling like a google type on line doctor could have done the same thing without my needing to physically be in the same room.

I like watching and reading medical mystery stories (real life ones, not fictitious). I love the medical mysteries in the Times magazine, for example. I certainly don't want to have a medical mystery wrong with me, but it often feels like all of medical problems (my skin itches, my eyes are on fire, my nose is runny, etc) are just mysteries that even the doctors don't know how to fix and so give a prescription and hope that helps enough that the patien doesn't come back.

I'm not trying to be down on medicine or say that doctors don't know what they're doing, just the feeling I've had from the last couple of doctor's visits I've had. But then again, I guess the dermo gets a lot of people every day who just come in itchy and looking for relief.

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On a different note, the old lady sitting next to me seems very impatient. She won't stop playing with her purse handles and fidgeting.