Damaged in Transit

“You’re arm’s bleeding,” someone told me in the airport Sunday.
“I’m not surprised.”

Sure enough, I must’ve banged my wrist against something because a break in the skin was bubbling up red drops which ran down to my hand. I set my bags down and pulled out the “billfold band-aid” I always carry these days and washed off the residue. All it ever takes is a minor bump or scraping against a hard surface and I have to check for ripped skin and fresh bleeders. Hence the billfold band-aid.

Travel is tough when you’ve got “old man skin” — and that’s basically what’s up. Open wounds are the worst but this huge blotch on my arm is just one of many I picked up on last week’s travel. This one came from a buckle on my carry-on bag’s strap pushing against my forearm.

This bizarre blotching started 15 years ago or so, when I first noticed small red blotches appearing on my forearms after I would bump or scrape against something. I realized these echoed the blotches on Mom got on her arms that used to alarm me. She downplayed it back then, saying the dog had scratched her and she was fine.

My blotching slowly got worse but my doctor was perplexed. In fact, he delayed my badly needed rotator cuff surgery a week in 2012. He refused to sign off on the surgery until I consulted a hematologist. The specialist didn’t know what caused the blotches either but signed off on surgery.

Eventually, I went to see a dermatologist about the worsening condition. “I see why you’re here,” he said as he stepped into the exam room. “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that is not serious and it’s not going to turn into anything serious like skin cancer. The bad thing is there isn’t a damned thing you or I or anyone can do about it.” He explained the blotches were solar purpura — AKA senile purpura. Great. I’m going senile from the outside in.

Wikipedia says it’s “caused by chronic sun exposure which leads to a breakdown in connective dermal tissue — especially in fair-skinned people who spent a lot of time in the sun as kids. And by the way, no one used “sunblock” then. We used sun tan oil to deepen that bronzing. Or burning, as was the case for red-headed me.

I excitedly shared my discovery at a family reunion later— only to find out multiple relatives who experience similar blotching.

I accept banging myself up while traveling as inevitable these days — especially with air travel. The bleeding part I could without. Sara got to wash some blood drops out of my shorts after the billfold band-aid leaked, so I removed it since more blood from coming out around the edges. Well, pulling it off ripped a larger bit of skin about an inch away and so I applied one of the big band-aids. I can see where that secondary bleeder, the one caused by my band-aid removal,  has saturated the pad there. This one will stay on as I travel to Vegas.

Wish me luck on the first leg of my Las Vegas excursion.