May: The month of noticing

My meeting with the dermatologist didn't turn out to be the one I had imagined, but at least now I knew what triggered my red marks. She had asked me to take pictures every week, and in the second week, I had to go and see her again to show the progress my skin had made. Of course, I am not planning to see her again. I have started applying "Kojitin Ultra gel" on my marks and have taken some pictures just to see the changes myself. I mean, I know that she knows better than me, but I am having my suspicions and doubts, and to be honest, I feel like a blind folded person walking in a dark tunnel where nobody is around to save her.

That was not all! Now my red marks had started changing their colour. Initially, it was slightly red, mostly of my skin tone, but now it's appearing to be darker than before. I thought i would be able to hide it from people around, but I couldn't be more wrong. The first question that I received was from one of my co-workers, who seemed perplexed by the darkening around my forehead. She told me that she had never seen tanning on my face, so what was this darkness all about? I patiently answered her question and told her the whole story behind the scenes. She was a little concerned and asked me to meet a good dermatologist, to which I replied that I had seen one.

But things didn't end there. Slowly, all my co-workers started noticing the change in my skin, and I was bombarded with plenty of questions flooding towards me as if an open gate had been unlatched for water to rush through. It wasn't just my cabin mates or my desk mates, but even those people who wouldn't even smile at me before. I kept a calm demeanor while answering them, but inside me, I was yelling like a child who can't reach the door handle to get out. I was too tired of repeating the story again and again that my frustration started building towards the people.

I needed a new doctor - I thought to myself. The gel that I had been applying wasn't changing anything on my face. Instead, the marks were rapidly growing around my hairline, and some even went to my neck. After further research, I came to know about another hospital where a few dermatologists practice. Without any further delay, I went to see the doctor to get a quick cure (Again, I was wrong to get a quick fix, because no such thing exists, whether it's skin or body). The hospital was quite big, but I was told that the skin doctor consults on the other wing of the hospital, which, fortunately, was just opposite the main building. I went inside the building, but the setting of the clinic wasn't promising. Anyway, I couldn't judge a book by its cover - I thought to myself and waited till the doctor came. The consultation fees there was 700 rupees, which was expected, and with an uncertain glance, I looked to the doctor who arrived after 30 minutes. He looked at my skin and told me that there could be two things that might have happened to me: 1) contact dermatitis causing PIH, and 2) Lichen Planus Pigmentosus (LPP), which was an autoimmune disorder caused by an allergen to the skin. He prescribed a long list of medicines for me, and without even googling anything, I brought every medicine.

I mean, of course, I needed a doctor now. I cannot treat something like this, as it wasn't any common tanning that can disappear on its own. I had to put faith in him and bring all the meds from the hospital's pharmacy. Again, for privacy reasons, I won't disclose the name of the hospital and doctor, but at least I can share the medicines that he prescribed for me. There was a sunscreen "Guneera", lotion "Nangun", and one cream in particular, "Triglow", that I was asked to use at night, initially for 30 minutes and then increasing the dose. I had never heard about the sunscreen mentioned, but anyway, I brought it without any further inquiry. All the medicines cost me around 2k bucks, but I knew that skin care is quite expensive, so I didn't give much of a thought. He asked me to visit him again after two weeks.

And this time I was ready to visit.

And with this readiness, I closed two weeks of noticing only to open another.

With love,

AY