Nom de Plume

Harry discovers Geoff’s empty beer bottle–and I find that I’m an enabler.

Steve was home sick yesterday. He’s not a very good sick person because he can’t seem to loll around and read all day. Instead, he has to be doing, doing, doing all the time. This elicits very little sympathy from me; I am the queen of lolling about and reading. But anyway.

His mother is coming for a visit week after next. And he realized that he needed to get the sink hooked up. (Apparently his mother can goad him into action; I should invite her to visit more often.) So we hoisted the darn thing off the pedestal so he could connect the faucets, cracking the pipe on one side. This was completely my fault; the thing weighs, like, 3 million pounds. There are two sinks, with two sets of faucet holes. He got one faucet attached, thinking that one is god enough for now.

YAY! Running water. We danced around the kitchen, Harry barking at our feet. Only to realize that there’s a major leak. Somewhere. We don’t know where. he dismantled the pipes trying to figure out where it was leaking. So the status update is this: We now have running water in the kitchen, only it doesn’t drain. We also have no dishwasher now.

There is some good news, however. He works in construction, and is now doing some pretty nice condos. The architect had specified these really cool, ultra groovy subway tiles from France, which are 2″ by 8″. They came in and the color was slightly off–they’re a light mushroom and apparently he says they’re too pink. No one can see any pink to speak of–and it means we’re getting them for free. Also, we’re getting new fridge, also free. Stainless steel, with the freezer on the bottom. It has a minor ding on one side.

I soak up sun. Even wearing a hat, SPF 30, and sunglasses, I still tan. So the white patches are becoming more and more obvious to me.

I suppose examining every pore doesn’t help either.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought some foundation (Zia cosmetics–who can resist?), and thought to myself, “WHY haven’t I been wearing this stuff all along??” Seriously, it was perfect. Only it was light coverage and didn’t really do much for the patches. I had read online that MAC has some good coverage foundation. So today, I hoofed it down to the mall and hit the cosmetics counter. The girl caked me up.

She was pretty caked herself–but it looked as though underneath the three inches of putty, blush, and chartreuse eyeshadow she was a pretty girl. Which leads me to the following observation: Even though I threw down 140 bucks, I’m thinking that maybe Dermablend is the way to go after all. I’m caked, and you can still see white patches if you look up close. Say hellooooooo kabuki doll.

Normally, I don’t write about really personal things. I mean sure, I talk about Steve and Harry, and post pictures of the house and all that–but I tend not to write about work, or very personal issues.. So this post is an exception, and you are forewarned that it’s personal and also very long. I’m still a little freaked out, but it’s a more controlled freak out because I know exactly what is going on, and have a clear course of action.

A couple of months ago, I was shaving my, uh, nether regions, and noticed there were some white patches of skin. I thought it was really weird, but I was super busy work-wise, and I meant to look it up, but didn’t. Then, two weeks ago, I was running out to a client meeting. While I was brushing my teeth, I couldn’t remember if I had put on deodorant, so I raised my arms to check in the mirror. “Wow,” I thought. “I put on way too much!” Rubbed the white patches and they didn’t come off.

I got in a car and called Steve in total freak out mode. He interrupted me when I started telling him about the nether region patches. “Oh you’ve had those forever. You have some under your arms too.”

“Were you planning on telling me this?” I asked. “How long have they been there?”

“I just figured it was another one of your skin weirdnesses and didn’t want to get you all paranoid.” Much as it pains me to admit, he’s right on both accounts: 1) I have weird skin stuff; and 2) I am a complete hypochondriac. So when I got home, I made an appointment with the dermatologist. For the record, on the question of how long they’ve been there, he wavers between “since we’ve been together” and six months. Typical guy.

But then I noticed a patch on my face.

It wasn’t white–but it was definitely paler. Is it my imagination? Is it really there? Is it exactly like the other patches, or could it be something else? What about that red circle around it? And those bumps? So I started in on the Internet research.

I’m good at research. I love research. And I’m also on the computer all day long. At home. Alone. Where I have ample opportunity to imagine the worst. Before long, I was convinced I had both vitiligo and lichen scleroma, but was hoping that it was systemic tinea versicolor–not that the systemic part exists, but one can still hope, right? And my doctor’s appointment was still two weeks off. Then, I met Steve up in Victoria and we spent the day walking around in the sun. The next day, in a client meeting, I excused myself to go to the bathroom and while washing my hands started fixating on the light patch on my cheek.

And then I noticed that the areas above my eyebrows were sunburned.

“Of course, they’re redder,” scoffed Steve in an attempt to comfort me. “They stick out more.” The countdown to my doctor’s appointment began in earnest.

Still hoping that it was tinea versicolor, I started applying an antifungal lotion on my face. They just kept appearing. I hoped against hope that it was the versicolor thing, but I knew different. It was vitiligo.

I was bordering on hysterical. In the course of the next week, I went through all the stages of grieving–including acceptance once I realized that pretty much anything can be covered by makeup. And there’s specific makeup for this. The fact is, I spend less time on makeup than any other American woman alive, so who cares if I need 10 extra minutes every morning.

Meanwhile, I missed my hair appointment and my grays kept on growing in grayer. (I’ve been going gray since I was 25; my grandmother was completely gray when she was 35.) I was examining my head in the mirror, and noticed a patch of white. And then it seemed to me that my hair was thinning. Like seriously thinning. Alopecia (I had a bout of alopecia areata my early 20s) and vitiligo can go hand in hand. Never mind that Steve insists it’s been like that forever. Now there’s more Internet research. And there’s more hysteria.

So in other words, the last two and a half weeks have been absolutely terrible. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything. I had my appointment this morning. “I didn’t shave my armpits,” I explained, “so you could see that some of the hair is growing in white.” I didn’t even have my shirt off when her ears perked up at the mention of white and she said the dreaded word: “Vitiligo.”

I knew it.

But all is not lost. It’s all over my face–but it’s also early in the game (which means it’s just paler–you can only really see it up close). There are treatments. So we’re starting with Protopic, and she seems to think that repigmentation is more than likely. There are other, more aggressive treatments if the Protopic doesn’t work. And there’s always makeup. After the past couple of weeks, just knowing for sure makes a huge difference.

And there’s nothing wrong with my hair, except for the fact that I’m 33, not 23.

You wouldn’t know it today–which is damp and drizzly–but yesterday was HOT. Steve and I took the dog around Seward Park, and then the two of us collected bathing suits and hit the open waters of Lake Washington. We left Harry at home. When we got back, this is what we found:

We puttered around the house, doing laundry, dishes, nagging Steve about hooking up the water to the sink. Finally, Harry finally moved …

…outside.

Well, Bifrost 3 came in second place. Pretty impressive. They sailed through last Saturday night–until about 3:30 in the morning. Steve wandered around the Victoria harbor like a homeless person–finally crashing in the grass–until my ferry came in. Which, of course, was late. Apparently, the race was fraught with excitement; high winds tilted the boat until the crew was dangling in the water, and they ripped the mainsail. You can tell that I know nothing about sailing with my descriptions–but here at Chez Smunshi, we’re pretty thrilled.