Acrodermatitis

The skin on your hands has cracked. Red, scaly, inflamed. Perhaps your fingertips burn when you touch warm water. Perhaps the skin pulls tight when you make a fist. Perhaps your soles are covered with small blisters that itch when you need rest. You moisturise. You protect. You put on gloves when you do the dishes. But the skin won't come to rest. It throbs like a door at which someone is knocking, and you are not opening.

Medically speaking, acrodermatitis is a skin inflammation at the outermost points of the body — at the hands and feet, precisely where your inner self meets the world. Cortisone cream dampens the flame. Antihistamines throttle the itching. Sometimes a change in diet helps, sometimes a change of climate. All of that is important and may have its place. But it doesn't explain why precisely the hands. Why precisely the feet. Why precisely now.