#frost bite

The last thing I'd posted was about how I went to the nurse practitioner and she diagnosed chilblains, and put me on blood pressure meds to dilate my blood vessels to promote healing. At the same time I started doing regular slatherings of Fissure King from beauty lab and wearing soft cotton gloves to help heal, as well. Plus trying not to get my hands wet during the day, wearing gloves when working in the kitchen, etc.

All of this improved the state of my hands and fingers, but I still have the patches/dry stuff going on. The pain is all but gone and it doesn't itch very often. Yesterday I had an annual check up with my dermatologist and she was irritated that I'd gone to the NP instead of calling her and telling her that the clobetasol (steroid) ointment wasn't working. She was also irked at the diagnosis of chilblains because "once it got warm, even if it was that, your hands would have healed".

She explained that the cold injury I got in January (not frost bite, maybe frost nip, she said "cold injury") kicked eczema on my hands into overdrive and that if I'd just told her the clobetasol was making it worse she'd have switched me to another med (which I'm picking up later today, zoryve). So I'm back to eczema and properly chastened about not trusting my dermatologist (whom I've been seeing for a good 30 years now). I'm still struggling with wanting to apologize a lot and send her a card or something, but I gotta get over that. I made a mistake, and it was only me who suffered from it. It's not a huge deal.

The zoryve was going to cost $183, but I went online and found a discount card from the company, so it's nothing now.

I've had another friend tell me "Oh yeah that stuff works GREAT" So I'm hopeful.

Oh, and the dermatologist said that all the other stuff I was doing as suggested by a lot of y'all was exactly right and why my hands had improved to much. So at least there's that. Thank you all so very much.

Night sketches u.u (I was drawing this at 3 a.m.)