Poisoning my Face to Heal It

Yesterday I wrote about a few visits to the dermatologist this year, where I got zapped with a cold ray and was told I had 'scaling'. After the second round of cold ray treatments the doctor said that using the cold ray felt like playing whack-a-mole with my scales. (Though I imagine it a very fun variation of whack-a-mole to be suppressing a reptilian metamorphosis with a cold ray.) So she also gave me a cream, Fluorouracil, to rub on my forehead at home for two weeks.

That last appointment was 10 weeks ago now. I put off starting use of the cream for 8 weeks. I had other medication changes going on, plus travel. I wanted to minimize risk by not starting multiple new things at the same time and not starting something just before leaving home for two weeks— like when a head wound burst while I was 2,500 miles from home. So starting the Fluorouracil cream got put off until the start of this month. And it was a good thing I put it off— because there were definitely issues with it!

Sores on my forehead after 8 days of treatment with a chemotherapy cream

This picture (above) is after 8 days of treatment. This is worse, way worse, than my skin looked before treatment. If you want to picture what the "scaling" on my forehead ever looked like, imagine if just 3 or 4 of those, like 30 sores, were visible. And weren't as red and irritated looking.

I knew the cream would make things worse to make them better. Fluorouracil is a chemotherapy treatment. Chemo is a game of deliberately poisoning your body but doing so in a way to target the poison at the bad parts of the body more so than the good parts.

But still, I wasn't sure if this reaction was within bounds. I texted the doctor, and her MA called me the next morning to set up an urgent telemedicine appointment. I rearranged my schedule to see her same-day.

As I explained to the doc at the start of our call, I was looking to answer a triage question. Was this a situation of:

1. Normal results. Buck up and keep going;


2. Slight concern. Pause or make minor course adjustments and keep going; or


3. Major concern. Hang up and get to a clinic.

Long story short, the doc said it was totally "A", results as expected, and urged me to keep going to 14 days. And she warned that it was going to get worse. "I'm sorry it's so gruesome," she added.

And yes, it got worse.

( See how gruesome it got... )

Sometimes it's just Being There that Counts

I want to expand on a comment I wrote in someone else's journal a few days ago. I call it Sometimes it's just Being There that Counts.

I remember at the end of my senior year in college one of my housemates was (credibly) accused of cheating on a take-home final exam. He was put through the wringer for several days. First there was the formal accusation from the professor, then defending himself to the professor, then defending himself to a faculty tribunal whom the dean convened to judge the matter. During that time his mother drove up (his parents lived 3-4 hours away) and stayed with him for a weekend. She brought a bedroll and slept right on the floor of his room.

"What the heck is his mother going to do?" I wondered. Did she come to help plead his case? Cry and put on a show for her "innocent little boy"? I didn't get it.

What I didn't get is that she wasn't there to do any of that. Which, honestly, was good, because the faculty would (or at least should) have laughed them out of the room. He was a 22 year old man, and it was a graduate level course. No, mom was there just to be there for him. To remind him that, whatever the outcome of the academic integrity case, his family still loved and supported him.

It wasn't until years later that I internalized this wisdom. Instead, for years I viewed "support" as something objective, some measurable, something transactional. If a person needed help because stuff in their house was broken and they couldn't fix it, you went over and helped them fix it. That was measurable. You could measure success by number of fix-it projects solved. Just going over to hang with them for a few days? Sure, it's nice, but that's the point if you don't do anything that directly reduces the size of the problem?

The life lesson most of us learn sooner or later is that not all problems are quantifiable. Their solutions are not always measurable in actionable increments. Like, what if the problem is a relationship? Your friend or relative is in a rocky situation with their partner. How are you going to measure the degree to which you've helped "fix" that? Yeah, you could offer something like, "I'm going to help you pack up so you can move out," but that presupposes a specific solution to the problem. If they didn't ask you, "Come help me move," they're probably not ready for that yet.

In the comment I wrote elsenet I tied this back to the situation that's going on right now with my spouse and her family. Her parents are in their 80s, in declining health, and MIL was recently diagnosed with an advanced cancer.

MIL and FIL were already discussing plans with family to move out of the house where they raised their children, into a managed care home. But those plans have hit the skids as MIL struggles with suddenly reduced energy levels, MIL and FIL are busy with her trips in and out of hospitals and rehab centers, FIL is spending 100% of his spare energy caring for her at home, and both MIL and FIL are struggling with the emotional weight of knowing she might not survive 12 months.

My brother-in-law (BIL) drive up to visit them about once a month; he lives 2.5 hours away. But he gets frustrated that he's not able to do anything on his visits. He considers them trips in vain because there's no progress made on clearing out their 40+ years of crap from the basement to support them moving out or fixing things that are broken around the house to prep it for sale. What he's not getting is they're not ready for that stuff right now.

Meanwhile Hawk and I have taken a few trips across the country to visit them, have another planned next month, and anticipate more in the future. We stay for 10-12 days at a time and bring a very modest list of to-dos. Mostly we're there for them. We're there to ease their emotional load— not by fixing what ails them, because we can't, but simply by being there. Along the way we help out in simple, more measurable ways. We cook meals. We do grocery shopping. We do small clean-up projects around the house— but only ones where they're asking for help or are clearly struggling. I mean, sheesh, just throwing out spoiled food had them rooting through the literal trash can to interrogate our decisions. These little helps put sand back in FIL's hour glass so he can spent more time caring for MIL. And right now, decluttering the basement of 40 years of crap can wait.