I agree with Barbie, Chris kept his short beard and I think it was easier to just apply cream than to be shaving him.
He also had the itchy scalp. I was lucky that my pharmacist took a real interest in Chris and would come and talk long with me about issues like the skin itching and other small things. I would photograph things I had concerns about.
It turned out that we also got lots of little fungal things going on. For the itchy scalp he got me to take a shampoo that had a fungicide in it, and finally the itching was resolved.
Cortisone in sorbolene cream for the general skin itching, and then different fungal creams for other 'bits', and the shampoo.
I'm sure part of it too comes to a matter of debriding. All day, normally, our skin is getting rubbed against stuff, even just our own skin, and it helps clearing dead skin cells. As a PALS becomes less and less active and unable to touch themselves, I think this affects the skin. OK it's just something I often wondered about watching Chris skin as he just never had anything like this before and had always been so active.
Also he became so much more sensitive and I think it's the same kind of thing. Before ALS he ran cafe's and he was always burning himself, holding and picking up really hot things, and little cuts and scrapes. After he stopped doing all this he became more and more sensitive to heat and cold also, not just his skin but his mouth. He could put anything nearly boiling hot in his mouth as a chef and not blink. Suddenly I had to be very careful of temperatures of foods or drink for him.
