I can already tell I’m going to have some typos here. My fingers can’t move fast enough. Oddly I’m using my middle finger on the left and my index on the right to use the touch-screen, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that before. Could be something I’ve adopted because my left index finger has, for the first time in my life, decided it wants to grow a proper, decent nail and the sound of it ticking on my iPad screen is completely annoying. It might be okay if both index fingers made a sound but they don’t and that confuses my widdle brain.

But fingernails are actually something I wanted to talk about, sort of. I’ve never mentioned my annoying, weird, skin-thing here. Mostly because I have no idea if I’m making the problems up or not. Hell, I shat blood for years before I realised that wasn’t normal. Okay that really is off-topic. But bear with me, fingernails are related to the skin and hair, that keratin thang, and I’ve got some odd shite going on with all of it. I think.

My hair is done growing and that is that: it won’t get any longer. I’ve never had really long hair, and I believe there is a genetic cut-off that says ‘done!’ at a certain length. Hubby hasn’t reached his limit after over 6 years without a haircut, so I’m a bit jealous. I seem to be finally coming out of a months-long hair loss trend that pissed me off and also worried me a bit. I can now actually stroke the last few inches of my pony-tail and not have dozens of hairs come out in the process. So that’s good – but why was it falling out and why did it stop?

My fingernails (see I said I’d get back to that) have always been really thin and soft and squooshy. A while back (could be years, I have a terrible sense of time) I noticed one or two on my left hand had an odd texture. Heavy ridges, and little bumps like sand dunes on a beach. Google wasn’t any help to figure it out. Then my left index actually started making a real nail that didn’t break when you looked at it funny (and turn into a deadly razor-blade), or rip off below the nail-bed and make me sore and bloody for weeks. So: second question – why is my hair falling out but my nails are improving – but also doing funky patterns?

Last issue is the biggie, and the reason I finally am going to talk to my GP on Monday. I have very dry skin. It looks pretty good, I have to admit that. I don’t physically appear to be over 40 – in the summer, at least (I’ll get back to that in a bit). But, it’s thick skin (maybe why I don’t have the wrinkles I should, considering my childhood in Florida when sun lotion meant putting on baby oil or something else to get a better tan). It’s so thick that it requires, as I get older, an immense effort to exfoliate. I’m talking a lot of damn work that I resent a lot.

I have to use those gloves that are super-scratchy to take off the dead skin. I have to soak myself in hot water – and I have never liked hot showers – first, and then again and again after each scrub. If I run out of hot water, which is bound to happen, I’ve left a layer or three of damp, itchy, dead cells on my entire body that drive me INSANE for the next hour or more until I dry out entirely. Baths are much better, especially if I beg hubby to do my back, but our water tank is small and it takes ages for me to fill a tub, and then another 2 hours for the bath. And…the dead skin floating in there is just…horrible. I have photos that I might share with the doc, if I’m not too embarrassed to do so.

Skin lotion doesn’t help much. All it does is make the un-shed skin still stuck to me stay wet longer and prolong the itchy nightmare. If I really get to do a thorough scrubbing-job I’m always debating if I should use lotion or not. I want to, because I get so damn dry, but I rarely see that it makes a difference. Currently I can do an Ally Sheedy impersonation just by rubbing my leg, arm, or forehead – I’m talking about her fabulous dandruff-snowfall in The Breakfast Club, of course. My forehead annoys me the most right now. The dryness has extended down below my eyebrows. My goddamn eyelids are peeling! Ick. You’re not supposed to use exfoliating gloves on your face, but I can’t get the dead skin off any other way – and if I use face-cream more than once a day, I’m a mass of zits. Quite annoying at my age when I didn’t have a problem as a teen! So, I’m sort of hoping that a professional will be able to help, as I can’t and won’t buy every face-cream on the market to test it out, that shit is crazy expensive.

Well, I’ve been dealing with the skin-issues for years. It’s gotten worse in the last eight but I couldn’t say if is it due to the damp, sunless climate in Ireland, or if it’s just me getting older. I do know that I mentally crave sunshine, and that my face ages five years in the winter. I suspect a vitamin D deficiency, but I’m not going to play around with taking tons of different vitamins and waiting seasons for a result just to experiment on myself.

I finally am going to ask for professional help because since Christmas morning, I seem to have developed a fungus, or something. It started on the sole of my left foot as a clump of tiny blisters that looked like a particularly nasty cold sore and itched like mad. Google told me it was likely athlete’s foot, a fungus. I then caught the local creeping ick after new year’s eve and stayed home for a week taking antibiotics – and the very next week at work I noticed a load of tiny little bumps on the sides of most of my fingers. I thought it was a soap allergy, as I had just used a liquid soap in the bathrooms at work that I usually do not use. However, within two days it had progressed to the palms of my hands. No longer little bumps that didn’t bother me, I have had, since the first week of January, leopard-spots on both palms that itch and refuse to be cured by the miconazole ointment I bought and have used at least once a day since. The hospital-grade antifungal soap at work I prefer, and use about four times a day, also hasn’t helped. The little bumps on my fingers have peeled around the edges, but haven’t gotten smaller. The ones on my palms, and the original spot on my foot, also have a ring of peeling skin but the crud keeps coming back. This also worries me as I am a very fast healer. Sweating and hot water make it itch worse – not very great when I require hot water for the other skin BS, right?

I believe there is a pill I can take to cure the fungus that will have to be prescribed – but the thick-skin issue that seems to have prevented the ointment from working now has to be addressed. It isn’t going away, and if continual fungal infections are my future I Am Not Amused. I’m also not keen on the theory that I might need a sun-bed in the winter months (even if my whole being cries out for sunshine).

If you’ve bothered to read this far: any ideas or advice appreciated, especially as regards what I should ask or tell my GP.