July 25, 2023: Seborrheic dermatitis. Does the medication fight the cause?
July 25, 2023. I had already been sitting in the dermatologist's waiting room for an hour. Once again, I was plagued by the itchy seborrheic dermatitis on my scalp. This bothersome condition, with its red patches and flakes around my eyebrows and nose, kept reappearing without any hope of a permanent cure, as dermatologists said it was not permanently curable. I had been dealing with this skin issue since the beginning of my relationship with Jule. My father also suffered from flaky and red skin on his face in the winter, and my mother was convinced that I had inherited this tendency from him, as there was no one with dermatitis in her family. It was somewhat distressing when a new hairdresser noticed my flakes and talked about them out loud, so that other customers in the salon could hear.
I wanted to take the opportunity to discuss both my hair loss and seborrheic dermatitis with the dermatologist and ask a question that I had always wanted to ask since researching skin creams.
"Mr. Fufaef," the staff member called out, trying to pronounce my last name correctly. She too made the mistake of pronouncing the "AE" in my last name as "Ä." I stood up and followed her to another room. There I sat in front of the doctor’s desk and waited another ten minutes for her.
When the doctor finally came, she asked me about my problem. I explained that I had hair loss because after washing my hair, many of my hairs ended up in the drain strainer. I also mentioned that I followed an almost vegan diet. The hair loss itself didn’t bother me much. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't linked to any disease.
She examined my scalp and said that my hair loss was hereditary, but I should still get my blood values checked. While inspecting my scalp and eyebrows, she also noted that I had seborrheic dermatitis on my scalp. She then sat back at the desk and wanted to prescribe some remedies for hair loss, but I stopped her with the question I always wanted to ask but never had the courage to.
"Do these remedies address the root cause of my hair loss?"
"No, they don’t... but," she replied, and before she could finish her sentence, I said, "then I don't need these remedies."
She stopped writing.
"But you can gladly prescribe me medications for this fungal infection. It itches immensely," I continued. She prescribed me a shampoo for my scalp and a cream for my eyebrows. I was very proud of myself for having the courage to ask an authoritative person a legitimate question. After that, I was in the library.
After being productive in the library, I took a walk to Nieschlagstraße, passed by the house where Jule lived. I looked up at her living room window and wondered what she was doing. I continued walking through the adjacent park and then went home.
It was already evening when I got home. I spread peanut butter on rolls and while doing so, I looked at my chair and table. Although I felt a bit strange, I listed both on classifieds to give away. A few minutes later, the first interested parties contacted me, and a man picked up my furniture the same evening.
I placed my laptop on the shelf of my clothes rack and could type perfectly while sitting cross-legged. Nevertheless, my room felt empty, as if I hadn't fully moved into the shared apartment. But somehow, it also had its charm.
When my laptop was locked by the downtime function at eleven o'clock, I lay in bed for a while and dreamed of a world without tables and chairs.
"I enter a school and stand in front of a classroom. A teacher asks me to take off my shoes before entering the room, just as I do at home. Most of the students are learning on the floor. One student sits cross-legged, a book in hand. A girl lies on her stomach on the clean carpet, writing in a notebook. Another student sits on the windowsill, legs bent, discussing the current physics topic with a classmate. The physics teacher sits on the floor with two students, holding a feather and explaining Hooke's law to two other students.
In cafes, libraries, meeting rooms of every company, and everywhere else where there used to be many tables and chairs, there is now only the floor, where people sit in socks."
Learning: I always ask the doctor whether the medication they want to prescribe addresses the root cause. If it doesn’t, then I decline it as long as the symptoms don't bother me significantly. This way, I avoid unnecessary medication intake, costs, and packaging waste.