Yesterday’s installment was on blood pressure (fabulous again today) and potassium level (requiring blood tests, so who knows?). Today, it’s flaking skin and diarrhea. The first is something of a mystery; the second turns out to be another tricky exercise in getting medication at just the right level.
Flaking skin. Had xerosis / xeroderma — the fancy name for the symptom — for more than a year, skin that flaked off in small patches, on my arms and legs (and nowhere else) leaving a snowfall of skin flakes wherever I sat or stood. Constant through changes in the weather and the seasons. Not eczema or psoriasis, because there was absolutely no itching or inflammation. Not due to sun damage, because I spent very little time in the sun. Not due to harsh soaps, because I use hypoallergenic soap with aloe in it. Not due to overbathing, because I shower only once a week (a shower being a complex exercise taking up about an hour from beginning to end). Alleviated only fr a moment by applications of coconut oil, which I do almost every day. So a mystery.
Then it vanished several weeks ago. And then reappeared, in annoying full force, a few days ago. I am baffled.
Diarrhea. Again, for more than a year: on a pretty regular basis, about 20 minutes after a meal, I urgently had to get to the bathroom for a bowel movement (in a matter of 15 seconds or so). Or else. So: no eating out, or scheduling excursions soon after eating.
Then it got worse; in the hospital, I had explosive diarrhea that came on without any warning. Handled on an emergency basis there. Eventually controlled by the medication cholestyramine (Questran), which comes as packets of a powder that has to be mixed with (suspended in — it doesn’t dissolve) some liquid (I use milk), which you then drink. All of that takes some time, and the packets have to be dealt with (by me, every day) separately from the tablets of medication (which are put into dispensers, by my daughter, once a week).
You start with one packet a day, with breakfast, and then move to two a day, with breakfast and dinner, if one packet does’t control the diarrhea. One packet a day wasn’t always enough for me — but I feared that two packets would produce constipation, so I opted for 1 1/2 packets a day: 1 packet one day, 2 the next. All for me to schedule and administer. So it’s an additional daily burden.
But I can now look forward to wearing ordinary underwear for part of the day, rather than the protective pullups (relatively sleek adult diapers for men). That would feel more ordinary, more everyday, and would also be cheaper than the single-use pullups. Everyday would be nice.
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