Healora™ ad: Feel Normal in Your Own Skin Again

My son asked me to book the family beach house this summer and then stay home. I booked it. I paid the deposit. I kept the extra key. Ray and I rented that house every June for twenty-six years. A gray house up on stilts at Topsail Beach. A porch that faces the water. A screen door that never shuts right. He died three summers ago. I'm 67 now. I kept booking it anyway. Every January I mailed the deposit. Every June I drove down alone and sat on that porch and told Ray how the grandkids were doing. My son Brian and his wife Kristen moved back from Colorado last fall. Owen is six. Lily is four. They had never once been to the beach house. When Brian called in March, the first thing I thought was: finally. "Mom. Kristen and I were talking about the beach. We were thinking just the four of us this year. Two whole weeks. Would you book it like always? We'll pay you back." I said of course. I said it sounded perfect. I didn't ask to come. He said just the four of us. I respected that. The weekend before they got there, I drove down by myself. Five hours. The same road Ray used to drive with the windows down. I swept the sand out of every room. I made up the bunk beds with dinosaur sheets from Walmart. I put a new rope on the porch swing. I filled the fridge with juice boxes and the yogurt tubes Kristen said Lily likes. Two boxes of popsicles. Sugar cookies with the sprinkles. I left a note on the kitchen counter. "Welcome to Mimi and Pop's beach house. Make it loud. Love, Mimi." I locked the door. I put the extra key back in my purse. It still has the little plastic seahorse Ray clipped on it in 1998. I drove home that night. I was happy for them. The first Wednesday they were down there, I called Owen. I wanted to know if he'd found the crab holes under the porch. He answered out of breath. "Mimi! Guess what! Grandma Gail is coming to the beach! She's flying all the way from Phoenix!" I held the phone away from my ear. "Grandma Gail is coming?" "Yeah! Mommy said it's a surprise!" I said something. I don't remember what. I called Brian as soon as we hung up. "Hey, Mom." "Honey. Owen says Gail is coming down." "Oh. Yeah. Kristen's mom really wanted to see the kids at the beach. She's flying in for the second week." A pause. "Mom. Kristen just thought two weeks would be a lot for you. She's been worried since Dad. She says you haven't been yourself. You don't hug the kids anymore. You sit way down at the end of the couch. You wore a sweatshirt to Owen's ball game. In June." I didn't say anything for a long time. "It's gonna be a good week," he said. We hung up. I sat at my kitchen table until it got dark. I had swept every room. I had filled that fridge. I had made up the bed Gail was going to sleep in. And my son thought I didn't want to hug my own grandbabies. I didn't care about the money. I cared that I wasn't family anymore. I was the woman with the key. Brian didn't know why. For two years I'd had a rash under my breasts. Red and raw in the crease, like paper cuts. It burned every time my bra moved. By supper it was wet no matter what I did. I showered twice a day. I folded paper towels and tucked them under my bra. I wore the sweatshirt so nobody would see the wet marks come through my blouse. I sat at the end of the couch. That way the kids wouldn't lean on me and hear the paper towel crinkle. I tried everything Walgreens had. The Gold Bond powder was fine at seven in the morning. By noon it was paste in the fold. I'd be scraping it out with a wet paper towel in the church ladies' room. The Lotrimin helped for two days. Then it was wet again, and worse. I stood in the checkout line at 67 holding Desitin from the baby aisle. I prayed nobody from church was behind me. Every morning I stood in the bathroom with my arms up and the hairdryer on cool. Ten minutes, before I could put a bra on. I never told a soul. Not Brian. Not even my doctor, really. I said "a little rash." He said keep it dry. So that night, I called Bev. Bev is 69. She was a nurse for thirty-eight years, most of it on a long-term care floor. She retired the year Ray died. She lives across the street. I told her everything. The beach house. The note on the counter. The popsicles. Gail. What Brian said about the hugging. She let me finish. Then she said, "Stay there. I'm coming over." She came across the street in her house slippers with a little zippered makeup bag in her hand. She set it on my kitchen table. Then she sat down across from me and said, "Donna. I have to tell you something. I should have told you at Easter." "What." "You've got a rash under your breasts. Don't you." I froze. "How do you know that." "Because I can smell it, honey." I couldn't breathe. "It's a yeasty smell. I smelled it on half my patients for thirty-eight years. I'd know it anywhere." "Bev. Are you telling me I smell." "When you hug. When somebody sits close. Not across a room." "I shower twice a day." "I know you do. That's what kills me. You're not dirty. If anything you're too clean. It's the fold." I put my hand over my mouth. "And kids notice first. They sit right at that height. They climb in your lap with their little face right there." And then I remembered Easter. Owen climbed in my lap after the egg hunt, like always. A minute later he wrinkled up his nose and said, "Something stinks." Then he pointed at Lily and said, "It's her." Lily cried. Everybody laughed. I honestly didn't know it was me. I put my face in my hands at that kitchen table, and Bev let me. When I looked up she was still sitting there. "Listen to me," she said. "Under your breast is a closed-up place. Warm and wet. Three things are going on in there at once. The sweat can't get out. The skin rubs on skin every time you move. And yeast grows in there, because warm and wet and shut is what it likes best." "Soap gets it clean for about an hour. Then your bra goes back on and it closes right back up." "Think about a dishrag. You can wash it in hot water. But ball it up wet and leave it in the sink, and it sours by afternoon. It's not dirty. It's balled up wet." "Every single thing you bought only went after one of those three. The powder soaks up a little and turns to paste. The Lotrimin kills some yeast, but it's a wet cream going into a place that's already wet. The Desitin seals the wet in. You've been fighting one thing at a time for two years and losing to the other two." She unzipped the makeup bag. She took out a little sage-green tube with a white cap and stood it on the table between us. "It's called Healora. It goes on like a cream and dries down to a powder. It kills the yeast, dries the wet, and stops the rubbing. All three at once. I keep two because they sell out. You take this one." I picked it up. It was smaller than I expected. It fit in my hand. "Thin layer. Morning and night. After you shower and you're dry. Not a glob. Thin." "Use it for a week. Then drive back down to that beach house. Don't tell anybody you're coming." She kissed the top of my head and went home. I sat there a long time looking at that tube. I'd told myself a lot of things over two years. I didn't have anything left to lose. That night I read the box with my glasses on. Undecylenic acid, to kill the yeast. Zinc oxide, to calm the raw skin and cushion the fold so it stops rubbing. Witch hazel, to pull the wet out. Tea tree oil that works slow, to fight the smell all day. Silica and tapioca, so it keeps soaking up sweat and never pastes up. A little plant glycerin so it stays comfortable. I put it on in a thin layer. It didn't sting. In about a minute it was dry to the touch. I went to bed without a paper towel for the first time in two years. The burning was gone by morning. By the third day I could tell it was working. I put my bra on without the hairdryer. At lunch I checked the fold the way I always did. Dry. Just dry. I hadn't had a dry lunchtime in two years. On the sixth day I walked across the street and hugged Bev. A long one. She held on and put her nose right against my shoulder like a bloodhound. "There she is," she said. I packed a bag that night. Two pairs of shorts. My swimsuit. The white linen blouse Ray liked, the one with no sleeves to speak of. No sweatshirt. A wrapped present for Lily, whose birthday was that Friday. I put the tube in my toiletry bag. I put the seahorse key in my purse. Of course I had a key. I'd rented that house for twenty-six years. I drove down Wednesday morning. Five hours. Windows down. I let myself in at two in the afternoon. Everybody was down at the water. The note I'd left on the counter was still sitting there. Somebody had set a bag of chips on top of it. Nobody had moved it in ten days. I made a pitcher of sweet tea. I sat on the swing. I watched the tide come up. At five I heard them on the stairs. Brian came up first. He saw me and stopped on the top step. "Mom?" "Hi, honey." Owen came flying past him, sandy to the knees. "MIMI!" He launched himself at me. I caught him on the swing and it nearly went over. He held on. He put his face right in my neck and he stayed there. He stayed long enough that Kristen got to the top of the stairs and stood there watching us. "Donna. We didn't know you were coming." "I know. I wanted to be here." She didn't say anything. Brian said, "Mom, that's... that's great. Of course you should be here." Lily climbed up on the other side of me. Then there were two of them in my lap, wet bathing suits and all, and nobody blamed anybody for anything. Kristen stood in the doorway and looked at me for a long time. Gail got in Thursday afternoon. She is Kristen's mother. We've met maybe six times. The wedding. Owen's christening. A couple of Christmases. She is a perfectly nice woman. I'd been ready to dislike her all week. I couldn't. She hugged me at the door and said the house was beautiful. She said she was glad I came. That night after supper I got the guest book out of the drawer by the door. The house has kept one for as long as we've rented it. Ray signed it every June for twenty-six years. Owen sat next to me on the couch. Right next to me. I turned the pages slow. "That's Pop's writing. That's the year your daddy lost his first tooth on this porch. That's the year the storm took the stairs." Owen put his finger on Ray's name. "Can I write in it too? Under Pop?" "Yes, baby. That's why I brought the new pen." Kristen was watching from the kitchen. She turned around and went into the bedroom. Friday morning Gail walked the tide line with me while the kids dug a hole to China. "Donna. Can I ask you something personal?" "Of course." "Kristen told me you'd been hiding in sweatshirts. Not hugging the kids. I haven't seen you hide from a thing all week." She pulled at the T-shirt she'd been wearing over her swimsuit every single day. "I get a rash under my bust every summer. Since my forties. I wear this so nobody sees. And here you are in that blouse in ninety degrees with a kid hanging off you. What do you do?" "It's a cream. It's called Healora." "Healora." She typed it into her phone. Then she said, quiet, "I don't know what Kristen saw before this trip. I see a woman who drove five hours twice to take care of all of us." I couldn't get a word out. "Will you send me the link when we get home?" "I will." She squeezed my hand. Owen came running up yelling about a crab. That night was Lily's birthday and the crab boil. Ray's recipe. Newspaper on the porch table, corn and potatoes and Old Bay. Lily blew out four candles. When we sat down to eat, Owen looked up and down the table. Gail was next to Kristen. I was next to Brian. Owen got up and came and took my hand. "Mimi sits by me." He pulled me to his end of the bench and leaned on me the whole meal. Butter all over both of us. Gail just smiled across the table. She has grandkids too. She knew. Kristen stood at the screen door and didn't move. The next morning Kristen came out to the porch where I was having my coffee. She sat down on the swing next to me. She didn't say anything for a while. Then she said, "Donna. I owe you an apology." I waited. "For what I said before this trip. That it would be too much for you. That you weren't yourself." She looked at her hands. "And for this whole last year. You stopped hugging the kids and I took it personally. I pulled them back. I told myself I had reasons." So I told her. The rash. The paper towels. The hairdryer. Easter. She put her hand over her mouth. "Owen blamed Lily," she said. "We all laughed." "I know. I didn't." She cried a little. So did I. Then I said, "Go get yourself some coffee." She poured a cup and came back and sat closer. Owen came out in his pajamas, climbed into my lap, and fell back asleep against my chest. Kristen took a picture of us. She texted it to me an hour later. "Tape this in the guest book. Next to Pop." Bev texted me Sunday night. "Well??" I sent her the picture. Gail ordered her Healora the day she got home to Phoenix. She calls me now. On purpose. Before we left, Kristen booked next June. She put the deposit on her own card. Owen already asked if he can have the bunk closest to my room. If your grandkids have stopped climbing in your lap and you keep telling yourself they're just getting big. If you've been folding paper towels under your bra and hugging people sideways. If you've started to feel like the one who pays for the house and stays home. It was never your hygiene. It was the fold. And you can dry it out and keep it dry. Get the tube. Then drive down there and walk in. Gail asked me to write down exactly what to get, so here it is. It's called Healora. It only comes from healora.com. One tube is $29.95 plus $4.95 shipping. Two tubes are $39.95 and ship free. Three are $54.95, free shipping. The cheapest way is the monthly delivery. They call it the Prevent Recurrence Routine. It gets as low as $14.98 a tube, free shipping. That's what Bev and I do now. The fold doesn't go anywhere, and if you stop, the rash comes back. They give you 365 days to change your mind and get your money back. They say 96% of people heal their rash within 24 hours, half of them overnight. If you're the other 4%, send it back. It's a small company and it sells out. If the link still works, it's in stock. healora.com I'm still the woman with the key. I just use it now.