Wintertime Woes: Extreme Eczema

“What happened to his hand?” My husband asks as he turns over our four-year-old’s little wrist. There we see what looks like a really bad scrape across his knuckles. I review our playground time, I check his school communications, I think back to that morning. Did he fall anywhere? No, nothing had happened.

“Honey, did you fall?” He seems confused and says no. But something must have happened. I take his hand to inspect the scrape again, and that’s when I feel it. His skin is all dry and scaley like it’s about to flake off.

He has eczema. I know it well. I understood when we moved from milder climates to Beijing winters that it would rear its ugly head in full force. I remember my younger years when my mouth was so cracked that it looked like someone had spread lipstick around it, my young adult life when the bitter cold air would invade my skin so that I walked around town as a gaping open wound. Out of everything my poor youngest kid had inherited — his sparkling eyes, his huge smile, his monstrous hugs — he also had to get this ailment.

Educator Kim Clifford recalls how she found a way to help her son Lachlan, five. “We fought dry skin for my son since his birth. During COVID, we discovered most of the cause was a wheat allergy. We cut it out and it did wonders for his skin. He would scratch until he bled before. Now we just have to lotion his hands due to the cold weather and the harsh soap used at school. We previously used Cetaphil as it was the only one that would work. Now we use Aveeno for his hands.”

I know that rhythm very well. You find one way to keep it at bay, then your skin gets too used to it and you need another gel, another lotion, another thing to squeeze out of a tube that might possibly bring you relief. Then, that remedy stops being effective, and the cycle begins anew.

Nikki Malek, who is known in Shanghai for organizing adventures for families, says that as soon as the weather turns colder, her skin starts peeling. Even something as simple as soap in a public bathroom will cause the tops of her hands to shred and get incredibly red and raw. She found relief in Bebebalm, a product created by Shanghai Mom Carol Ong and her doctor husband to help their baby with his horribly dry skin. The balm comes in jars or portable sticks and can also be used as chapstick. Malek admits she will take the chapstick with her and slather it on any part of her skin that feels dry.

I personally go through at least one tube of chapstick a month. If I forget a tube, I must buy a new one, or by the end of even a mild winter day, my lips will bleed from cracking. A change of climate is especially harsh on eczema and affects which products will work. After my second child was born and we were potty training my first, I washed my hands so often every day that the only ointment that worked was Burt's Bees Fishermen’s Hand Salve. It took a product specifically created for fishermen’s cracking dry skin to give me any relief.

Even after finding her miracle product, Malek knows that she can’t overuse it and so finds ways to maintain a little skin moisture equilibrium. “This past year, the skin started shredding on the tops of my legs and arms. I had to apply an oil made of raw wild garlic oil. It smells awful, and I love the smell of garlic, but this smells just awful. After a shower, I will pour oil over my whole body. I use an affordable brand from Germany, then I put lotion on in the mornings, not every morning, but around two to three times a week.” She even carries her own soap supplies and wears gloves and legwarmers to keep moisture inside of her skin.

I think of all these methods as I look back down at my son’s hands. I can see on his face that he is also confused because eczema has this weird side effect: if you give in to the itch and scratch your skin, it feels good in a really weird kind of way. You are tearing your skin open each time you drag your fingernails across the skin that aches for it, and it feels satisfying. That must be so confusing to a young kid. He’d grown out of biting his nails and picking his nose (mostly), but this is an entirely different beast. This sticks with you.

I know what he’s going to have to endure because I did it and still go through it. Years of moisturizing, of keeping tabs on my stress levels and the dry wintertime air, and even that one summer when it got so unbearable that I walked into work crying. My skin was affecting my health, my mental state, my self-worth. Luckily, my co-worker knew what was happening. She’d been through it, and continued to fight it every day.

“You need the three Cs,” she told me. “Cotton, cortizone, and chamomile. Only wear cotton against your skin, use Cortizone — gel, not cream — for the really bad spots, and drink chamomile tea, then refrigerate the tea bags for a natural itch suppressant.”

I followed her advice and also changed the soap I used for washing any part of my body. I returned to the Aveeno of my youth, to the oatmeal baths as prescribed in last week’s article, and more. And my skin did clear up. But that took 19 years to figure out. It’s time to start my little guy on his path to self skincare early.