Peeling

Since I've built up a bit of knowledge over the last month, I figured I'd share some of it in posts, rather than attach it to 'progress updates'.

Today I wanted to talk a little about peeling. BXO doesn't heal by just reducing in size; that skin has to go somewhere. From what I can tell, western medicine calls it an inflammation of the skin, and recommends a powerful topical steroid as an anti-inflammatory to counteract the condition. I actually think of BXO as more like a callus. Perhaps, in dermatology, a callus is classified as an inflammation of the skin as well. But when I read the word 'inflammation' and 'recommended treatment is a topical steroid' I expect to see an inflammation with an increased vascular component (eg, skin that is redder than usual). BXO is the opposite. A well-developed case of it, you can scrub with a pumice stone and feel absolutely no pain. Try that on a red inflammation, and you'll irritate the heck out of it.

Once you find a 'treatment' that forces the BXO into remission (in my case, it was nappy rash powder and keeping the area dry) you'll start to notice it peeling. It's really very tempting to grab at some of the peeling skin and try to remove it. Let me tell you now that forcing the peeling process is a really dumb idea. As I've said before, the way BXO peels is very different to a lot of other healing processes that involve peeling. They often lose only the top layer, and the skin underneath is healthy and normal. BXO gives you no such miracle. If you lose the top layer of BXO skin, you will be left with... you guessed it... the next layer of BXO skin. What's bad about forcing the peeling process is that you might be able to peel off a few millimeters of it, but then you will feel pain. At best, that might take a day or so to heal. At worst, it's a very big infection risk. I found BXO skin far more prone to become infected than healthy skin if it is cut.

Just trust me on this. Beneath that top layer of BXO skin lies another layer of it. Don't try and speed the process up by peeling it by hand. Don't think you're "helping things along". Don't try and justify it by saying you'll do a little more tonight than normal, but you'll stop before you feel pain (this is a flawed argument in so many ways). When you're injured and healing (and I believe the overall healing process goes slower while this is the case) you'll be wishing you were healed and could treat yourself properly. Learn to appreciate your non-injured, healing skin.


The next thing worth mentioning is how to judge progress. This can be really tricky, because there's no easy way to measure the number of layers of skin. Certain areas (eg the ring) have more layers than others, and while you might be shedding layer after layer every few weeks, you might feel you're not making progress. In a nutshell, peeling = progress. You'll generally see peeling before you see anything else, since if you don't peel, you're not changing anything.

Another sign that may or may not come after peeling is the appearance of more and more pink skin. Pink = good. Before I knew I had BXO, I actually thought pink = bad. But no, pink is non BXO skin. I came to that conclusion after some bad injuries I had refused to heal back to normal colour. I worked out that what had happened was that they healed and were replaced with normal healthy skin. What looked red and unhealthy was actually normal healthy skin, and the surrounding white was BXO skin. I confirmed this when I dug up an old photo I took of my penis and measured the redness of the glans and inner foreskin. It looked totally different from how it does at the moment. You won't see pink coming on in a uniform way. As the skin thins in patches, those patches will be more pink than nearby skin.

The other way to judge progress is to watch the BXO skin at the point where it borders on healthy skin. This is where it is the thinnest, and where it will revert to 'normal' skin the soonest. You should see 'normal' texture gradually creeping onto the BXO skin. I did, anyway.

You might decide to take photos. A few caveats here:

• Don't expect to see any difference in photos taken days apart
• Don't expect to see any difference in photos taken weeks apart if you don't use a decent level of magnification
• The variation in lighting between photos WILL make them virtually useless for the purposes of comparison
• Auto-orientation of images on modern smart phones will irritate the shit out of you
• There will be times when you'll be storing photos of your dick on your phone. This goes without saying, but think it through. It's fine if you tend to keep to yourself, but it's not so great when you're out with friends and a conversation subject comes up that you know you have a good photo of on your phone, but can't remember whether or not you deleted those photos you took. The same rule applies to your computer or wherever you will be storing the final images. Now sure, I know you can take precautions to try and ensure this doesn't happen, but stuff happens and occasionally things slip through the cracks. So be careful. And in my opinion, photos aren't really worth the hassle for the minimal benefit they bring. I say this having taken literally hundreds of them during this exercise.

Another thing I should mention, although I'm sure I have mentioned it before, is not to forceably peel the skin that shows signs of wanting to peel. When you do this, it will eventually end badly. You'll injure yourself, and take longer to heal. So don't do it.

Now for the admission of what I'm still uncertain about. I haven't noticed much obvious peeling on my inner skin. This is a pretty big disclaimer, and potentially a big ugly rash on the face of my so-called treatment program. Why?

Because I have a restored foreskin, some of my shaft skin is what makes up the skin that covers my glans. So I have BXO on my shaft skin as well as my inner skin. Those of you who were never circumcised probably don't have this. You'll have all your BXO on your inner skin. The areas where I've noticed the biggest improvement are all on my shaft skin. My phimotic ring appeared on my shaft skin. So everything I've seen is arguably not an indication of how yours will recover. I don't know how, (or even if) my inner skin is peeling. There's no doubt it's becoming much tougher when dry than it used to be, and I can definitely see peeling layers on the glans, but it's far less pronounced than on the shaft skin. Granted, this problem could all be due to the fact that the inner skin peels slower than shaft skin (which isn't particularly quick to begin with) so it seems like nothing is happening. However, my big fear right now is that the bottom layers will be replenishing as fast as the top layers are shedding, giving me no net loss in BXO skin.

I have, however, noticed that the inner skin is much more prone to breaking up into tiny pieces that can then be scrubbed off when the skin is slightly wet (eg after drying post-bath or post-shower). So it may be that, due to the mucosal nature of the skin (inner foreskin is apparently mucosal and is the same kind of tissue as the inside of your mouth) it just peels differently to shaft skin. I have to say, however, that when I've burned myself inside my mouth before, that skin peels off in layers too. Although that is in response to a wound, AND as I've already said, BXO doesn't peel like any other ailment I've had that involves peeling. So it's probably all nothing to worry about.

But I will be honest and admit that I'm currently not certain whether my treatment regime is able to peel anything but shaft skin. There you go, I said it. Believe me, once I know either way, I'll post it here. In the meantime, all I can do is more of the same and hope to see some measurable progress.

One last point I'd make is that a magnifying glass and good light are essential tools for measuring progress. You can make out the subtle changes occurring over a few days. One thing I will say, however, is that when you use a magnifying glass, that peeling skin looks even more eager to peel than at a normal scale. If you see that, you WILL want to peel it by hand. Did I mention that forcing the peeling process by hand is a bad idea?