Wind Chill and Hospital Visit

Snow squalls kept the Trans-Canada closed north and east of here last night. It isn’t snowing today but the windchill is -30 and the forecast says it is to be -40°C tonight and tomorrow. Brrrrrrr…

So whatever it is on my cheek has gotten worse every day. Today when I woke up the skin under my eye was so swollen and puffy it was affecting my eye – looked like my eye was swelling shut. So Jeff and I braved the cold and went to see a Doctor.

However I don’t have a family Doctor, even though I’ve been on the waiting-for-a-doctor-list here for years, so I had to go to the walk-in clinic at the hospital emergency room. The triage nurse checked me out and said she was pretty sure it was shingles and sent me off to the clinic in the basement.

We didn’t wait too long for them to call me back into an exam room, but then I sat there for about 40 minutes. Luckily the Dr. working the clinic today was my FAV! He’s such a nice man. After he looked at my face he said, “I sure wish I was a dermatologist, because I have NO idea what this is.”

He said we could treat it like it was from the cold because it didn’t really look like rosacea because it’s mostly on one side of my face. He left the room to see if the dermatologist could get me in today at a special dermatology clinic that is on the weekends. Turns out it is next weekend so they are working on getting me in as an urgent patient.

He decided to treat it as if it was rosacea just in case it was. He prescribed a gel to put on it twice a day (and the info sheets that come with it say it will take 2 weeks to work! AHHH!) and the pharmacist also recommended a particular cleanser to use on my face before I apply the gel.