I've been used to splits at the ends of fingers and thumbs for years. Usually they start when the temperature drops to 10C, and that's when I start upping the hand cream and wearing gloves outside. My right thumb has a couple which I think never really heal properly and open up again at the first opportunity. For such small things they can be extraordinarily painful for a few days. The only treatment that sort of works is to keep them covered (not always easy) with plenty of Vaseline. And that takes a couple of weeks at the least to go away.
The cause seems to be low temperatures aggravated by the skin-thinning properties of dexamethasone (of which I took 10mg yesterday morning, with another 10mg due later this morning).
Recently, as well as the finger-end ones (I have one healing and another just starting up) I have had them on the sides of fingers as well, on or adjacent to knuckles. I've just counted six. The trouble with these is that every time I bend an affected finger it flexes that area and opens up the split again so it doesn't get a decent chance to heal and these ones take even longer than the finger-end ones to get past the painful stage and go away.. Immobilisation plus Vaseline is the obvious answer but wouldn't improve my keyboard skills or my chef abilities.
Here's a photo of my right first finger. Apologies for the flash shadow but it was needed to get a decent amount of detail while holding my phone in my left (non-dominant) hand.
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