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Praise for The Blue Man and Other Stories of the Skin
“How does our skin define us? In The Blue Man, dermatologist-author Robert Norman not only provides an entertaining and informative overview of how our skin shields us from harm but also provides clues that disease may be running amok in our bodies. The Blue Man will appeal to all those who make the health and care of skin their business and to general readers seeking to learn more about the body’s largest organ.”
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If I took all the patients I have seen and put them along an elastic spectrum, I could not stretch it far enough to encompass the contrasts in characters and skin that I have encountered. The differences within this multitude of humanity are as bright as the sunniest day and as dim as the prospects of a few of them rising above the genetic lottery.
During any given week I may see and treat a coal-black Nigerian boy who has barely learned to speak a bit of English; an old, world-worn Southern farmer with tiny islands of coral blue eyes in a sea of sun-damaged skin; a shoulder-stooped, bronzed Cuban man formerly a prisoner under Castro, his face sagging in depression and haunting memories; a homeless skinny black man, washing his feet in the exam room sink, specks of vitiligo everywhere on his skin, as if a dripping paintbrush had splashed randomly onto him; a red-armed backwoods white boy from Arcadia, dragged in by his sleepless mother because his skin has peeled off from eczema and he has missed most of the school year and scratched and hollered every night; a thin, slack-jawed, coffee-colored Haitian woman who arrived in Florida by boat in the middle of the night; and any number of those whose skin cancer or psoriasis or itching has gotten so out of control that they grab onto my office exam table like a buoy in the Atlantic during a hurricane and will not leave until they finally gain relief. In between may be visits with children who have warts or young men and women with acne, who recognize the relatively benign nature of their problems, and may even add some hope or levity to the day.
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