Peeling!

One of the side effects of IL-2 is that your skin gets very dry. And when it gets so dry it starts peeling--much like it does when you have a bad sun burn. Woody looks like he has had quite a bad sunburn or a very bad case of dandruff--he leaves flakes of skin just about wherever he goes! The dry patches are on his face (even on his eyelids), scalp, neck, arms (especially the arm that is broken and in a cast most of the time), hands, and back. Earlier today he was just rolling the dry skin off one of his hands. This dryness and peeling does make him itch also. We were given Eucerin cream to put on the dry areas and that does help some--at least for a short period of time right after we put it on. But then the dry "peely" skin is back.

One of the things that Dr. Sosman told us yesterday is that we won't talk about setting a surgery date for fixing Woody's broken lower left arm until after the peeling has stopped. The peeling skin could cause an infection to set into the surgical site. Always one more thing to take into consideration! Of course Woody isn't ready to face surgery yet, anyway!

Woody is still pretty weak. He is eating better--although things still just don't taste right to him--even ice cream doesn't taste right. At the moment I want to get some calories into him so he will put on a bit of weight that he has lost--so he will have it to lose again if he does undergo this next set of treatments. We're still not talking about next week--just focusing on getting him stronger this week.

I told him that we were going to start walking laps tomorrow--from the family room to the living room and back! He needs to start doing some sort of exercising to get his "get-up-and-go" back!