So I'm at work shredding a whole bunch of papers when I look down at my arm and see this skin disease-looking thing happening there. It sort of looked like I had dirt spread about my arm and a little bit of scaling going on, too. Was I becoming a lizard?
After getting scared, but thankfully before booking a doctor's appointment, I decided to surf the internet -- a.k.a. the knower of all things -- for an answer as to what this particular thing might be. I kept getting two results (acanthosis nigricans and age/liver spots), neither of which really looked like what I had going on.
Then, thankfully, I came across a blog that had the answer for me in the form of a mom panicking about not being able to wash the dirt off her daughter's skin and starting to freak out worse than I was doing. See, she'd already booked the doctor's appointment and gone there. Turned out, her daughter had nothing more than what I had.
In her case, it was blue bed sheets. In mine, it was my grandfather's blue couch cushion. See the connection? That's right, they're both blue!
Apparently, blue items like those are often dyed with "cobalt," which is a substance that if you make contact with long enough, will rub off onto your skin and give you those patches of dirt. And no, they won't come off with soap and water, no matter how many times you wash yourself.
Good news: They do come off, but only with alcohol patches.
So if you think you're turning into a lizard or a dirty pig, before you go running to your skin doctor, try rubbing some alcohol patches on yourself first. If the residue comes off, you've probably fallen victim to the same cobalt dye that I did. If it doesn't, then good luck with your acanthosis nigricans (or whatever other skin disease applies)!
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