Indeed, there is some connection between Mickey Mouse and today's memories. You see the way he is dressed? For my junior and senior years in high school, I'd dress in a similar fashion going to bed every night.
No, not the shoes. Focus on the white gloves. I wore a pair of them whenever I went to sleep. For a while, I used my grandmother's old ones. Who else would have had a drawer full of white gloves but her? And maybe Queen Elizabeth.
Of course, I quickly figured out that those white gloves didn't fit me so I had to go to Genung's Department Store in Mount Vernon, New York. Um, these don't come in sizes for men. I asked for the largest ones they had. Small, medium, large, and Beatrice Arthur.
So, why the need to do this single evening for two solid days?
Contact eczema. An ugly, ugly skin disease and those are the photos, like frame 313 of the Abraham Zapruder films of the JFK assassination, are not something you want to see.
Yet, I lived it.
It came out of nowhere really. I thought it was part of puberty. Body hair growing in weird places, voices cracking, and incredibly itchy fingers. The latter became so intense that only the constant wringing of my hands would alleviate the need to scratch. Of course, once the itching stopped, I felt relief as if it was an orgasm. Or whatever a fifteen-year-old sense that an orgasm felt like.
Once the itching stopped, my fingers, and particularly the skin between them, would get dry, crack, and sometimes bleed. It was disgusting and the main reason why I was always sitting on my hands in American History. It would take a week or so for the condition to dry up and then you'd think it was gone.
Wrong. The process would start all over again.
Okay, in the not-trusting-doctors world that was embraced by my folks, this disgusting display had to go through about a dozen iterations until my mother made the obvious suggestion.
"That looks terrible. You better go to the doctor."
No shit, Mom.
Going to the doctor meant a visit to Dr. Weisberg in the Bronx. He was our family physician and everybody trusted him with their lives. I wouldn't have relied on him to pick up my dry cleaning. The man didn't really work hard and he treated everything as if he was a Boy Scout using a First Aid kit on a mountain hike. Every possible ailment was handled with aspirin or an Ace bandage. I've always thought that if Dr. Weisberg was on duty at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963, he would have sprayed JFK's head wound with a shot of Ungentine.
Marcus Wel-not-by didn't fail with his treatment of my hands, either.
"That looks terrible. Get some Vaseline hand lotion."
D'oh.
The hand cream was useless. I started using anything of the sort that was in the house. Whatever Mom had in the bathroom. Whatever Grandma had in her cosmetics drawer. I found going to class smelling like a hooker in Berlin.
Nothing worked. Hand wringing, hand wringing. Orgasm. Dryness. Peeling. Bleeding.
And all over again.
I completely stopped making hand contact with anybody and anything.
I don't remember who was the genius that finally suggested I visit a dermatologist, but that was the move that saved my teen age dignity. At last, somebody was going to help.
The diagnosis was a stunner.
I was allergic to virtually every soap, cleanser, shampoo, and cologne.
Thank God oxygen was spared.
The treatment was even more of a head scratcher.
I was instructed to soak my hands every single night. Whereas some folks would enjoy a glass of warm milk before bedtime, I got to have the same. Except instead of drinking it, my hands would soak in it for an hour. After that, I was told to apply this very greasy prescription ointment to my hands.
And then cover them all night with white gloves.
This worked well and alleviated the problem. Except the allergy never went away.
I couldn't use regular bar soap. There had to be special purchases of something called Basis Soap, which is chemical free. In public bathrooms, I could rinse off my hands but never pump the soap dispenser.
I couldn't put cologne on my hands. If I ever wanted to smell better, I needed to use a spray.
I couldn't use shampoo unless I was standing in a shower where the constant cascade of water would always and immediately rinse it away.
And I couldn't dare touch household cleansers like detergent, dishwashing liquid, or bleach unless I was wearing rubber gloves.
Whereas it all seemed like a chore at the time, I quickly adapted this all to my life.
And, decades later, I still maintain the same practices. Basis Soap. Rubber gloves. Shampoo only in a shower.
There are those times where I might spill a little Tide on my hands and I can immediately feel my skin reacting. It feels like something out of "Little Shop of Horrors." The monster is being fed. I run to a sink and run my hands under warm water for two minutes.
You learn to live with it.
I thought this was solely my cross to bear until a few weeks ago. The British sister of a good friend was here on holiday from England. We were somehow talking about childhood ailments and I brought up my long-forgotten eczema.
"I had that, too."
And she described it all. Step-by-step. Itch-by-itch. The nightly dipping into warm milk. The ointment.
And the white gloves.
I was not alone. It must be how you feel when you realize there are people in the world who are alcoholics or drug addicts. A common bond. Except we don't necessarily have the need to be anonymous.
But, truly, if you saw my hands back then, you really wouldn't want to know me.
Dinner last night: Sausage pizza at Fabiolus.
1 comment:
What other medical secrets have you been keeping from us?
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