I have rosacea.
I typed and retyped that five times because, you see, I have it and I don’t even know how to spell it.
It’s this whole turning 30 thing, I tell you. Every year around my birthday, I have some aging mishap or another.
When I turned 25, I got my very first ever cavity.
When I turend 26, I had to start wearing reading glasses.
When I turned 27, I developed a huge permanent wrinkle on my forehead, which I call THE CREVICE.
When I turned 28, I noticed that I had two matching spider veins on the sides of my thighs. Which are there to stay.
When I turned 29, I realized that after years of coloring my hair for fun, I now actually need to color my hair FOR REAL. I went from having twelve grey hairs to having 2548 grey hairs OVERNIGHT.
And now, turning 30, I have rosacea.
For years, I thought it was pronounced “ROSA SEEYA”. It’s not. It’s pronounced “Rose ay Sha” and now it pisses me off when people pronounce it rosa-seeya.
What it is: (from www.rosacea.org) “a chronic, acne-like condition of the facial skin that may affect as many as 13 million Americans. It typically first appears when people reach their 30s and 40s as a flushing or subtle redness on the cheeks, nose, chin or forehead that comes and goes. If left untreated, rosacea tends to worsen over time. As the condition progresses, the redness becomes more persistent, bumps and pimples called papules and pustules appear and small dilated blood vessels may become visible. In some cases the eyes also may be affected, causing them to be irritated and bloodshot. In advanced cases, the nose may become red and swollen from excess tissue — the condition that gave the late comedian W. C. Fields his trademark bulbous nose.”
HELP!
So what that boils down to… I have two “ragedy-ann” type red spots on the high parts of my cheeks. Tears of a clown? Because he had rosacea, baby.
Currently, the dermatologist has me on Tetra-cycline and this gel which smells like ass. Plus, the pits about the tetra-cycline junk is that if you have dairy in your gut, it counteracts the medicine. So I have to take it either 1 hour before I eat or 2 hours after I eat. The problem is that this is a very short window of opportunity. And I like a snack at night of pudding or a glass of milk, so the evening pill’s a toughy.
You should see our microwave cart right now. We have Chelsea’s various medicines, Esteban’s horse suppository pills for his bronchitis, his “happy golden sleep” cough syrup, his Zyrtec, a Sam’s Wholesale bottle of Advil from my recent bout of the “curse”, my tetracycline junk, and my muscle relaxant from pulling my shoulder muscle at volleyball last night. It’s like we live at my grandmother’s house.
“Arlene! Don’t forget to take your heart pills!”
Dr. Skin is hoping that the neon-tetra crap will bring down the redness in my Ragedy-Ann dots and get it “in control”. I’ve never been in control in my whole life, I doubt that some wimpy medicine that can be taken out with a bowl of Cottage Cheese will somehow bring me IN CONTROL.
The worst part is when he diagnosed me, he kept saying “It’s a textbook case. Textbook!”. Go ahead, Dr. Skin, say the word “Textbook” one more time. I’ll rub my pustules on you.
According to their web page, I must refrain from hot weather, cold weather, excercise, blushing and hot foods or I’ll turn into W.C. Fields.
Oddly, the ass-smelling cream has made my face extremely clear. When I tell people about the rosacea, they all say “I don’t see a thing.” Bless them. Bless those people and their clear, bright skin.
I think I should get a handicapped parking sticker or something. Also, Dr. Skin recommended that I join the Rosacea Society. Because there’s a club for people like me. A CLUB! A society full of rosy faced people with pustules and nodes and bulbous schnozz’s.
Next birthday does not bode well. I’m just breathless in anticpation of what is going to break, fail, or fall off as I age. I’m certain that by the age 50, I will just be a torso, just an angry, grey-haired, RED bulbous torso. Named Arlene. With a mustache.
The worst part of the gradual decline of my bod is that I’m realize that I peaked cosmetically and never really got to enjoy it. Being overweight as a child, I was told, “Don’t worry, you’ll lose weight when you get older.” And I couldn’t wait. And everyone told me I’d be just drop-dead gorgeous Which is not to say I don’t think I’m pretty just the way I am, thank you, but rather to say that I always had this unconcious assumption that THINGS WOULD GET BETTER. Then with the advent of the aging syndrome, I’ve slowly come to realize:
This is as good as it gets.
You’re never going to look any better than you do at this moment. And you look worse now than you did last year. It’s all downhill at this point. I think this completely sunk in when I developed “middle-age” skin on my hands. They say that you can always tell a woman’s age by her hands and it’s absolutely true. It’s become crepey and thin and more wrinkled. If you pull on the skin above my knuckle, it does this wiggy pleating thing. It’s hard to describe. Suffice to say, it’s pretty awful.
So suck it up, sweetheart, you’ve seen as good as it gets. That plant ain’t gonna blossom no more.
And that’s not the depressing part. The thing that depresses me is the fact that:
IT WASN’T THAT GREAT TO START WITH.
It’s kind of like when you’ve been anticipating a ride on a new roller coaster for weeks, and you go to the amusement park and you’re pumped, totally stoked for this ride. Oh man, it’s so going to rock. And when your car leaves the loading dock, your blood is just pumping. And throughout the whole ride, you’re just waiting for this death-defying loops and drops and stuff. And then you’re back in the loading dock and the roller coaster dude is releasing the safety bar. And all you can say is “That’s IT?!?!?!”
Another analogy for this would be waiting to see “The Mummy Returns”.
Just call me the red stumpy torso and leave me alone to wallow in my shallowness.
