skincare

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Skintervention

What is going on with my skin lately, friends?!?!

I am having some serious skin drama, is what.

It’s tempting for me to blame everything on the bottle of Kirkland-brand body wash I bought the last time I was at Costco. (It was obviously enormous, and also there were two bottles per package, so it was not my smartest purchase.) I tried the body wash and noticed the next day that my legs were itchy and a little bumpy. So I didn’t use it for a few days, on the off chance the body wash was causing a rash. When I used it again, sure enough: RASH. And this time, my legs were so intensely offended by the body wash, I got an immediate flaming red, itchy, bumpy rash all over my legs. It took more than a week before the rash went away; I had to pull out the big guns, which is a tube of high-intensity corticosteroid that makes my skin both greasy and sticky. 

Fine. Body wash induced leg rash is one thing. But now I am having a rash on my neck and something is going on with my face. It’s not a rash, but it is itchy and there is redness and a lot of teensy breakouts.

I used to suffer from eczema, when I was a kid. As a result, I am very careful about what I put on my skin as it is extremely sensitive. But I have had several decades of little-to-no trouble, so I don’t know that this is eczema. I suppose I don’t know that it ISN’T eczema, either. But I cannot find a cause of whatever is happening.

I swear to you that – outside the Kirkland-brand body wash, which I used for three days – I have not introduced anything new. I have been using the same face oil I’ve been using for at least half a decade now. I infrequently wear the same amount and brands of the same minimal makeup I’ve always worn. I wash my face in the shower with the same Clean and Clear face wash I’ve been using since the early aughts. I haven’t changed perfumes or body lotions or laundry detergent. I have been washing my sheets and towels regularly, in the regular detergent with the regular moderate amount of regular fabric softener.

Okay, I have had a good investigative think, and there are two other things that are new-ish to my life that could be potential culprits:

  1. New-ish Medication: I changed birth controls – a decision my insurance company made for me, when they decided out of the blue that they no longer wished to cover the bcp I had been on for MANY YEARS. I hate it, thanks. It’s not quite as bad as I anticipated (I have had some scary times with oral contraceptives in the past), but I do fall into a pit of despair for about a week each month, and also my skin is overall much more blemish-y than it has been in the past. But I started this new medication in April? May? Awhile ago; seems unlikely it would be causing an issue NOW. 
  2. New-ish Skincare Routine: I have been trying for months now to transform my “skincare routine” to a more environmentally sustainable one. I feel so ashamed to tell you this – but I am going to tell you anyway, on the principle that no one is perfect, and that each of us has room for improvement – but my skincare routine for the past few years has been a nightly regimen of wiping my face with a disposable Neutrogena wipe and then wiping my face with a disposable Noxzema wipe. I know. I am cringing so hard. Then I would slather my face with face oil. The end. This was an improvement, skin-wise, over my previous routine of leaving all the dirt and makeup on my face while I slept and then only washing it off in the shower the next day. But! I am horrified by all the waste this routine produces, so I have been weaning myself off of it. Change and I are not close friends, so the weaning process has involved many months of me a) looking into alternatives and b) reading other people’s recommendations and c) adding products to my online shopping cart(s). I finally procured some reusable facial pads and my husband (I think?) bought me a reusable face wipe. After trying them a few times, I realized, first of all, that I have no idea how anyone washes their own face without getting water EVERYWHERE but especially down their sleeves, and secondly, that I needed something on which to stow my pads and wipes. So I bought a little stand-up towel rack on which everything hangs. I have been using Pond’s cold cream and Neutrogena face wash, and I have been pretty regular about it since around September I think. But again, that’s nearly two months of no issues, so I can’t see why this new routine would suddenly bother me. 

This is all to say: I do not know what is going on with my skin, but I hate it so much. I have resorted to slathering my entire body, including my face, with Eucerin. It’s so light and so soothing that it doesn’t seem to exacerbate the issue, but nothing – NOTHING – seems to be soothing the itch. Not even my old buddy Benadryl. And I’m sitting over here with an itchy, broken out face and neck with lots of red blotches and scaly patches and I don’t know what to do. 

Perhaps I could call my dermatologist, but… a) I don’t think I will be able to get in to see him any earlier than January, and I already have an appointment for then, and b) I am afraid he will just prescribe Retinol again, which he suggested when I complained about my face several years ago. I cannot do Retinol; it is agony. 

So I am hoping that you, my dear Internet lovelies, have The Magical Solution. Or at least have some Skin Drama tales you can tell in commiseration.

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Contrast

Compare my lovely, carefree Wednesday morning with Carla to this one, during which my voice grew firmer and louder the later we got, and I repeated myself a hundred different times about a hundred different things, and I got in a really great workout of my sighing muscles, and we left the house at the time we were supposed to be AT school and it was only at that very moment of leaving, when Carla had FINALLY tied her shoes, that I noticed she had a hole in one knee of her leggings. (She went to school with the hole.) At one point, Carla said, “Don’t YELL at me, Mommy!” and I wanted to yell, “THIS IS NOT YELLING. WE HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO YELLING YET THROUGH A MASSIVE ACT OF WILL POWER.” Oh well. You can’t win them all. 

The skin of my face has also decided once again to turn on me. You will recall that I made the grave error of experimenting with anti-aging lotions and potions, and, after ONE application of such, my skin hissed at me that I WILL age and if I ever so much as LOOK at a product containing retinol again I will find myself wishing I never even had a face. I returned to the very gentle products I have been using for YEARS without incident, and, eventually, my skin calmed down. But today I awoke with red, raw, itchy cheeks, and the underside of my bottom lip is itchy and so puffy I look as though I’m recovering from a botched lip implant. (Though I can assure you that I will not be experimenting with fillers and Botox, based on the reaction I got from NEUTROGENA PRODUCTS.) I don’t know WHAT the deal is – I have not deviated from my routine, nor have I used any new detergents or pressed my face into any unusual fibers – but man am I glad that I can wear a mask in public to keep my lip from view. 

Mask usage is still robust in my area, but every time I venture into a public space, more and more people are bare-facing it. Devil-may-care that I am, I went to BOTH Target and the grocery store today. Inside! I’d say a good thirty percent of the people in Target were bare faced, including some employees. There were fewer people without masks at the grocery store, but SOME, which was shocking after seeing maybe a scant handful of unmasked customers in the past year. I understand, logically, that it is okay to go without a mask now that I am fully vaccinated. Even if a bunch of unvaccinated people are also going maskless (as we all know they probably are). The science is very clear that I should be FINE. That I am unlikely to contract Covid-19, and that I am unlikely to pass it on to my daughter, who is herself unlikely to contract Covid-19 and, if she does manage to do so, is unlikely to suffer from a severe case. I know all this logically. But it’s very hard to counter an entire year-plus of vigilant mask-wearing, an entire year-plus of purposeful separation from other humans, an entire year-plus of focusing solely on keeping my family safe through the power of masks and distance and isolation with simple logic.