A little close for comfort

First off, thank you to everybody for all your skin care recommendations! Here's the back story to that need.

The rash from the erbitux has been getting steadily worse as the treatments have gone on. Being the stubborn dude that I am, I haven't listened to the nurses say that I need to be moisturizing my body as the rash gets worse. I'm not exactly much of a metrosexual, so the thought of starting to use this much product was pretty much anathema to me. Well as it turns out, the nurses were right (go figure).

One of the other side effects of some drug that I'm taking is that my hair is starting to pretty much get weird. Chemo patients lose their hair, right? Not me. Except where I want hair. My head is getting pretty thin, but I'm growing hair in places that I've never seen hair before, and where most humans don't get it. The best part is that the hair coming in is very coarse and has a tendency to end up ingrown. So this new hair coupled with the erbitux rash has become a problem, and I ended up with an infected rash over most of my legs. My white blood count on Friday was over 13,000. Normal range is between 5 and 10k. Yikes! Our clinical trial nurse checked me out while I was being treated, and agreed that the rash was pretty bad on my legs. She talked it over with our oncologist, and they put me on some oral antibiotics to knock the infection out before it turns into something serious. Ella Mae also gave me another lecture on using moisturizer, and this time it took, which prompted Jen's request for good product.

So I've learned a good lesson the hard way - listen to the nurses! This infection was a little too close for comfort. I've been blessed that treatment hasn't been all that bad. This is a good reminder that it can turn serious quickly if we don't pay attention to the little things.

Thanks again for all your prayers and support!!

-ko