How are you all coping with the state of your hands?
Ordinarily, the skin on my hands is quite robust, never suffered with any skin issues and looks nice, smooth, No dryness.
I only use soap bar (the basic one, non-perfumed) with the occasional use of liquid soap (because it’s there and sometimes it’s easier).
I don’t use hand sanitiser (did that a bit when still going out to a couple of offices but it wasn’t enough to cause any damage and it didn’t).
So I wash my hands a million times a day with plain old basic soap.
They are so, so, so dry, with red rough patches., especially my right hands.
Hand creams do fuck all but I use them constantly anyway.
When cleaning, I put olive oil, or coconut oil on, then cotton gloves, then marigolds. That would have been my usual maintenance treatment. It doesn’t make much difference though. I do the same some nights as well, less the marigolds. I also tried a lanolin cream overnight and that did make them a bit better but it’s a tiny pot it won’t last me forever.
All I seem to achieve so far is stave of further damage as opposed to a proper repair process.
Not sure if I want to place a online order just for hand cream but I’d consider it if there’s some magic potion out there.
I also shouldn’t be wasting olive oil on my hands - there’s bound to be a shortage coming up all over Europe. But I don’t want to stop either.
I know any oil would do, so might switch to vegetable oil but I am aware I should be careful about not wasting our food ingredients to delay going out for a grocery shop as much as possible.
I am vain and like to have nice hands and nice everything else.
But seeing what we are going through, at the moment, I’m more concerned about the healthy skin aspect as opposed to ugly looking skin. I’m thinking this dry and potentially invisibly cracked skin on my hands could be trapping the virus within it so I wash even more.
DH, DS don’t appear to have this problem. DD recovers straightway with normal moisturiser. None of them wash their hands as often as me because they are not doing food prep or going to the bin as often as I do. And of course, the children have the advantage of young skin.
Let’s share our tips, concerns and hope, even if it sounds bonkers and even if, in the light of how serious things are, this should be one of the least things to worry about.