Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Dry skin and cheesburgers...

I work in a physicians office doing work too boring to possibly explain without falling asleep in the midst of posting. The one thing that working in a hospital/doctor's office has taught me is that it is vitally important to wash your hands with the regularity of an obsessive/compulsive on crack. It turns out the number one way we spread germs is by not washing our hands, say three hundred times per day.
Here at UAMS we are encouraged to wash our hands with a soap that is something like 30% alcohol based and then, when we aren't around running water and the hideously skin-drying soap, to use an alcohol hand rub. The hand rub has the magical ability to point out every tiny paper cut you have ever had on your hands with stinging pain and much eye-watering.
Needless to say, I use a ton of lotion. Right now I'm using slightly old-lady smelling jasmine tuberose lotion that I absolutely adore because it even works on my crackly elbow skin. Sure it smells slightly loud, but that fades and my elbows don't bleed when I bend them.
I can remember when I was younger I never used lotion. I'm assuming it's an ageing process thing, but now I could bathe in bear grease and still have dry skin. To top it off, my skin LOOKS older if I don't moisturize now. That's right, I have several grey hairs and my skin is becoming more like my Nana's everyday. Next I'll be buying Depends and a Medic-Alert bracelet.
I've also begun walking in the VA bridge on my lunch hour with all the old ladies who need exercise but don't want to go outside. This is probably similar to those mall walkers you always see at Park Plaza only these old ladies happen to volunteer at the hospital. For the record, however, the walking is actually going well and it's incredibly easy to make it a part of my daily schedule since I rarely ever take a lunch anyway. So, does it ruin the exercise if I go eat a cheeseburger for lunch?

1 comment:

McDreamy said...

ugh. the dry skin is part of the reason i've come to hate winter. my fingers and knuckles crack and bleed. i also have to wash my hands a million times a day - cooking? yep. changing diapers? yep. wiping bottoms? yep. cooking again? yep. taking the trash out twice a day, doing laundry literally 5 loads a day, taking care of daisy. i discovered Curel Ultra Healing. miracle!