December 19, 2022

Skin.

Since moving to the desert I’ve had some impressive dry, itchy skin, especially on the lower half of my body. I’ve been using Aveeno lotion to treat the issue and it’s done a fairly good job at keeping things under control, but after swimming I would be so uncomfortable with itching that I figured I needed to get this checked out.

I also hadn’t had a skin cancer full body check in a long while. Being a (former) redhead with lots of Irish skin makes me susceptible to this sort of thing, so it’s good to get checked out once in a while. Back in August I made an appointment with a recommended dermatologist; the first appointment available was today. I just completed my visit.

As a bald guy I have lots of bare skin on the top of my head. I don’t like the feeling of sunscreen on my body and I opt to always wear a hat outdoors and/or stay out of the sun whenever possible. There’s a couple of spots on top of my head that have been peeling a little bit. It turns out these were precancerous spots. The young Dr. Harold froze those spots today. He mentioned I might have a couple of red blotches for Christmas and I was fine with that. The other option was a chemotherapy cream that would cause my head to blister and turn tomato red and I decided to stick with the red blotches from the freezing effort.

Dr. Harold checked over the rest of my body and things are looking good for a (former) red head of my age. He recommended I switch from Aveeno lotion to Aveeno or another cream for the dry skin and he also recommended an anti-itch formula. I stopped at the store on the way home and picked these things up. I go back to the dermatologist in a year for a check-up.

I look forward to swimming tonight.