Wednesday March 23, 2016 Jenner CA.
Update December 2016.
I’m afraid I didn’t nail the rash as I thought. My rash is starting again and I haven’t used any hot water since last time, so it’s not the hot water. The rash is more of a celiac type rash as far as I can tell from my corn intolerant eating problem. Hot water helps relieve the terrible itch from this condition. So, hot water seems ok despite what I said below. The rash comes when I get too much corn stuff in me. It starts in my pelvic area.
I sure hope I nailed the rash
Last night I spent a lot of time hunting around on the internet looking for causes of my nasty rash. I did have more clues after talking with the docs and nurses yesterday. First, I found out it’s not hives as I first thought, which is a big help in determining what this rash is all about.
One of the nurses mentioned it looked like a burn when they were taking pictures of it, so that stuck in my mind.
And the biggest clue was this. Droopy, sagging, wrinkly skin where the rashes were, which were in all the same places that itched from the corn allergy.
Here’s what the inside of my elbow looked like. It’s a bit red and puffy too. Wrinkles are the main thing here which most rashes don’t have. The skin is loose and will sag. You might think that means there’s a lot of water in there, but it means there isn’t enough to fill up the lows in the wrinkles, thus dehydration.
What I did was got on the internet and started searching though any skin rash photos I could find looking for something with wrinkles. I found out very quickly that most rashes don’t’ appear to have this characteristic so I had to hunt a lot.
The cause of my misery
It finally paid off when I found a photo on a med site, of which I’ve already forgotten what site.. But it showed some small wrinkles so I read up on what it said about this type of rash, which was vey interesting and likely the cause of my misery.
Here’s what the guy said. Running hot water over the skin repeatedly dehydrates that skin and breaks it down. And eventually, the skin burns from lack of water and you get a rash like this.
Ok, that fits. I’ve found that running real hot water over my severe itches from the corn is the only thing that can stop the itch for a few hours. It burns off the histamines and relieves the itching for some time so you can sleep or just get some relief.
So, here’s what happened to me. I was doing a diet elimination thing with my food, looking and trying to get all the corn stuff out of my system, but for some reason, I just seemed to be getting into more corn itches, thus, more hot showers than I’d already been taking. Before I usually did two, or sometimes three hot showers a day, but now I was doing four or five to relieve the itches and much longer too and that’s where things went bad as now I was doing it enough to dehydrate my skin with the hot water.
I just made things worse
So, the more I tried to treat the itch and rash, the worst I made it, as basically what I now had was a severe burn, like a sun burn and it itched and hurt a lot.
And the cure
So, I’m pretty sure this is the problem. The cure is less showers and a moisture lotion on the skin often until it heals up. I cut out the hot showers and am using an aloe sun gel by Banana Boat. When the itch gets real bad I lather on a coat of this stuff and when it dries, it seems to sorta form a skin and relieves most of the itching and pain. I do have a real hard time getting it on my back though.
I’m hoping this will cure it, and I’m sure as this stuff starts to heal up, it’s going to itch real good. :O)
Using that lotion I actually sleep pretty good last night.
Headed out to kayak
So this morning I got it going and headed down to Jenner to kayak for the day.
After not kayaking for a few days, it was nice to get back on the water.The weather guys said the wind was going to come up some later today, but when I put in the sun was mostly out and the wind wasn’t too bad. I paddled across to Penny Island and started heading down the river along the side of the island looking like this. It was also high tide, so there wasn’t much current in the river right now.
This duck that I hadn’t seen before down here paddled out in front of me as I went, for a bit.
I pulled in behind this big stump for a bit, looking down towards the open mouth. I could see and hear the ocean was rough.
I headed down to the open mouth approaching it cautiously, just in case the current might be up even though I knew it was high tide and likely safe.
The river’s mouth is opened up real wide
This was my view as I paddled in front of the open river’s mouth, looking out into the Pacific ocean. The ocean was fairly rough.
There were seals and birds resting on the sand near the open mouth.
A big clue here in the sand banks
I paddled on by and headed up along here, where the ocean is on the other side of this sand. This shows the sand banks where the sand has been washed away and left those banks.
As I was paddling along looking at the sand that had been washed away by the river, I realized this shows a clue to how and why the river’s mouth moves north in the winter when the water level of the river rises.
What happens here is this. Throughout the year the ocean pushes sand over these sandy beaches in big waves that are large enough to get over these beaches, usually during storms or when the ocean is rough. It piles huge amounts of sand on these beaches and into the river.
When it rains a bunch and the river level rises, a lot more water goes down the back channel of Penny island. When the back channel water exits the back channel on the lower end of the island it reenters the main river. There’s enough force to push the river into more of a turn to the north. With this push on the turn to the north and the greatly increased river current, the river is forced into a right turn to the north..
With the increased water flow, the increased current picks up the sand on those banks and carries it north. The sand flows through the mouth, but with the extra north river push, it tends to plug up the mouth from the river side with sand causing the mouth to continue moving north and taking the sand in that direction too. This is how I see it all work as I watch.
Headed up Penny Island back channel
I continued on to the lower end of Penny Island and headed for the back channel.
I spied some terns on the water’s edge, just resting and doing a lot of squawking as terns do.
There were also some cormorants resting there too.
A good place for a nap
I paddled on up to the upper end of Penny Island and was looking in here and thinking a nap would be good in that spot as it’s out of the wind and the sun was shining on it too and the grass keeps one out of the dirt.
I pulled ashore and had my little nap.
This was my view from the spot I had my nap, looking up the river.
Headed on in for the day
I’m still a bit low on energy and by now the wind was picking up a bit, so I decided to call it good for the day and headed into the boat ramp and headed for home.
Mud at the Monte Rio boat ramp
As I was going through Monte Rio, I decided to go have a look at how much mud might be on the boat ramp there, so I drove on down to it and it looked like this. More mud will show as the river goes down.
I shoveled a little
I had my trusty flat shovel with me, so I did a little shoveling on the mud just to get a start right near the water level. I’ll have to keep at it as the water level drops. I should put up a tip box here. :O)
Needing to start fresh
I went on home and had some plans to work on my van and finish up my projects, but I was too beat to deal with the wiring under the dash, so I decided I’d stay home tomorrow and do it as the wind looks like it is going to be up again at Jenner. And sometimes it’s just good to get a fresh start on a project, especially if it’s complicated like under the dash where wires and things are running all which ways.
That was my day.