Wear and Tear

I'm getting to the point in my illness where I am at least going through the motions. I work out. I put on makeup. I wear real clothing that isn't made with fleece or Spandex. But I continue to feel like the walking dead. My head has been pounding for two days straight.

Erik seemed to be limping around the kitchen island yesterday. I told him to stop, and I sat him down on the floor. I turned the bottoms of his bare feet up to examine them and gasped. Not only is the skin on his toes so thin that it wears away on a regular basis, the skin covering his soles had worn out from simply running around the house. This has never happened before. In fact, it was so thin that his feet were reddish-purple and almost hot where they had been in contact with the floor. His soles looked like they were about to burst, and I hurt just looking at them. He hadn't given me one word of complaint, but he didn't protest when I covered him in shoes and socks. I have to keep shoes on him as much as possible to avoid the grisly bloodbath that occurs when his skin does disintegrate. Although it wears quickly, it heals just as fast underneath a layer of protection. On top of everything, he remains covered in eczema where the skin is a little thicker. His arms and legs feel like the surface of a freshly-plucked chicken, bumpy and dry, no matter what preparation I use or dietary change I make. Neither condition has improved in the slightest with time. Although I continue to go through the motions with greasy balms and lotions, I have really given up fighting it, as it doesn't seem to bother him or his doctor.

His skin just seems so fragile. And he seems so darned tough.

Leaky Feet

Random Thought of the Day: If crickets are supposed to be good luck, then why do I scream when I see them and fight the urge to smash them to bits? My biggest fear is bludgeoning a big, juicy one with the bottom of my huge tennis shoe and then finding a miniature top hat and cane next to the oozing husk. That's the only thing that keeps me from doing it, really.

I'm waiting with my delicious diet beverage for Erik's bus to pull down the dusty driveway. I wanted to update today to report the sudden surge in language that is happening in Erik. The complete sentences are coming fast and furious now, such as --

"Where's puppy?"

"I broke it."

"I love you, too!"

"I'll find it."

"I'll get it."

"I see it."

I also would like to pose a question to your parents out there in Willie World about skin and nail quality. Erik's toenails and skin break down easily. His toenails are stronger than they used to be (they split when he was a baby), but the skin on the ends of his poor toes wears completely through with very little trauma if he doesn't wear shoes, leaving trails of blood all over the house. If Brian ever disappears and there is Luminol employed during the investigation, I will be in BIG TROUBLE. The place will light up like a Christmas tree. I am constantly mopping bloodstains off the floor. Does anyone else have this problem? I thought it would improve since he began walking and not crawling so often, but the problem has actually not changed at all! He is still covered in mild eczema, mostly on his limbs, which consists of tiny, almost invisible bumps. His face gets bad in the winter, which tends to look a lot worse than the rest of his body. It's red and scaly.

I highly recommend 1 cup white vinegar to 1 quart water for mopping hard surfaces, by the way. Just in case you are wondering how to remove bloodstains.