thin-skinned

Years ago, when I was in a different part of Seoul from where I am now, I once went to an unfamiliar beauty salon to get my hair cut. Beauty salons are called miyong-shil in Korean: "beautiful-face rooms." A regular barbershop for men is an ibal-so ("hair-cutting place," roughly). I think a lot of us guys prefer the miyong-shil because it's fairly quick (and often cheaper) whereas the ibal-so is slower, more deliberate, more formal, and more complicated (although that may depend on the barbershop). 

I told the lady I wanted a fairly "regular" cut—nothing special, with particular attention to trimming the sides of my head. It became obvious within a couple minutes that she didn't have a delicate touch, and at one point, she nicked my earlobe, causing a bleed. She saw a flash of irritation on my face, and instead of taking responsibility for her mistake, she said, "You have weak skin." She applied tissue to the bleed, and it eventually stopped.

But she might have been right. I've been bandaging my right big toe for the past month or so ever since I dug a little too deeply into my foot calluses with a nail clipper, reopening the old diabetic ulcer, which never really filled back up—it simply developed a layer of skin over the wound, but for all practical purposes, that was fine. Now, though, the wound was open again, which meant a constant ooze of blood. Lately, the wound has no longer been bleeding, which is nice after several weeks of ministrations, but when I was peeling off a bandage tonight to wash my foot and re-bandage myself, I noticed a second skin-rip, caused by the mere force of the bandage's adhesive as I peeled it off. (Did you know the Brits call bandages "plasters"? They love misnaming things: a "grill" in UK English isn't a grill—it's a broiler, and "mince" isn't finely chopped meat: it's ground meat. Grrr. That said, I'm sure my British friends snicker at stupid Americanisms.) So maybe my skin really is weak or thin or whatever if a peeling bandage can rip skin off my toe.

This means that I had to go from tending to my old ulcer wound—now seemingly healed—to treating this new wound (and removing future bandages more carefully). Because the new bleeding was heavier (I belatedly noticed spots of blood all over the floor and discovered that my toe bandage was blood-soaked), I got mad and found my blood-stopper powder. With my brain working in overdrive, I improvised a new method for plugging the bleed: I tapped out a small pile of the powder, dipped a fingertip in it, then moved my powder-covered fingertip to plug up the wound and let the powder do its work. I had to do this several times, applying pressure, holding my fingertip tight to the wound for 60 seconds each time. After about three rounds of this nonsense, the bleeding was effectively plugged. I washed the toe and wiped down everything that had gotten sprinkled with the powder (just like talc, it gets everywhere), then reapplied bandages. It's been a few hours, and... no bleed. I think we're good.

I'm pretty sure the blood thinners I take every day aren't helping. So many stupid things to watch for. Stay healthy so you don't have to deal with this annoying crap.