Adding a little color

Today I did an Ultraviolet Light Test to measure my skin's sensitivity to sunlight. Typically after spending time in the sun, my body looks at my skin as a canvas and decides to decorate. No matter how meticulously I apply and reapply SPF 80 sunscreen, I end up looking tie-dye (and like a sunscreen idiot)by the end of the day. As the president of Pale America, my skin responds to everything and the dermatologist thought we should investigate a little bit further. When I go to the allergy/immunology department next week, we need to know what is a skin reaction and what is an allergy...or if it is both. Don't doubt me people. Apparently my crazy vasomotor instability (the inability for my veins to pump at a steady rate...or frankly, a rate at all) with my blood, also affects my skin and I only show one extreme or the other. I mean, I've always been an "all or nothing" kid, so it's only logical that my skin should follow suit, right?


Currently my legs look like this:

 
 My left leg was exposed to ultraviolet B rays for certain amounts of time (hence the squares) and then the reaction is followed for 24 hours. My right leg was exposed to ultraviolet A rays and is followed a little bit longer. Want to guess which one penetrates further into your skin? For all of you fancypants out there, this test is called minimal erythema dose (MED), which basically means they expose your skin to the lowest amount of ultraviolet light possible to see how it reacts. It was really rough to endure. I had to lie on a comfy bed with a heat lamp over my skin. I had to lie there for an hour. Tough stuff.


Bets on whether or not I'm going to end up with checkerboard tan lines on my thighs? Good thing it's the winter...in Rochester...where I don't go outside for days.


In other news, I had another meeting with my internist and we are definitely making progress. There are still lots of future and treatment questions, but we are checking things of the virtual list. I'm a teacher after all, you know how much I love a good color-coded list.