Wound-Care Nurse Reveals: “Put Some Cream On It” Is The Reason 3 In 4 Women End Up Making It Worse

For a lot of daughters caring for a parent, the “down there” rash keeps coming back.

And most of them are making the same mistake without knowing it.

Most of them have a drawer of half-used tubes. Desitin. Boudreaux’s. The yeast cream from the doctor.

Many of them call the briefs “underwear” so their mother won’t feel like a baby, and have never told anyone why.

Almost all of them have been told it is probably yeast, or just her age, and to put a good thick layer of cream on it.

But Maggie Doyle, a wound-care nurse from Ohio, wouldn’t accept that.

What she found inside her own mother’s brief changed everything she had been taught about this rash.

Maggie Doyle, 58, has been a registered nurse for 27 years in rural southern Ohio.

She looks after the skin under briefs every single day, in a nursing home, on people who cannot roll over on their own.

When a resident’s skin starts to break down, the other nurses send for her.

Which is why what happened with her sister Carol still sits badly with her.

Carol is 63, the older of the two. Works the front desk at a medical center, of all places.

Two years ago their mother, Helen, moved into Carol’s spare room. Carol does her changes. Before work, after work, and once in the night.

For a year Helen’s skin kept breaking down where the brief sits.

Carol never said a word to Maggie. The nurse in the family.

“She was ashamed,” Maggie says.

“Ashamed in front of me. Of all people.”

Carol finally told her in Maggie's kitchen, six weeks before Carol's daughter got married.

Their mother had talked about that wedding for a year.

She could not sit for ten minutes without asking to lie down.

She was raw on both sides, where the brief rubs. The skin in the crease had split.

“Carol said sorry to me,” Maggie says.

“She was standing in my kitchen apologizing, like she had done it to Mom herself...”

Every treatment Maggie knew gave relief. None of them lasted.

She already knew the standard advice. She wrote it on patients’ care notes every week.

Put some cream on it. Nice and thick.

She had written that advice for 27 years.

When a rash kept coming back, she put it down to age, like everyone else.

Until it was her own mother.

That night, after Carol went home, Maggie went back through eight months of care notes and phone messages.

Every rash under a brief she had treated or been asked about.

Residents in her care. Mothers of friends. Families who had called because they heard she knew about this.

Thirty-eight women.

Some got better and stayed better.

For the other 29, the rash kept coming back.

And all 29 had one thing in common.

Maggie had seen it at work for years, and never thought twice.

The inside of their briefs was greasy.

A white smear, right where the brief sat against the skin.

And the skin underneath was still wet.

One question would not leave her alone.

Why is this skin still wet?

So she stopped guessing.

The next morning she drove to Carol’s house and took one of their mother’s briefs to the sink.

She ran the tap over it.

It did not soak in.

The water beaded up and ran straight off.

Then she asked for a brief from each of the 29.

She tested the residents’ briefs at work.

The families brought theirs to her kitchen door, in grocery bags.

It took two weeks to test them all.

Every single one did the same thing.

The thick cream that was meant to protect the skin had rubbed off onto the brief and sealed it.

The cream had waterproofed the brief.

Then Maggie found out a lab had already tested this, back in 2005.

In the test, Vaseline-type ointments went on skin, with a small piece of brief over them.

Within five minutes, most of each ointment had ended up on the brief.

After that, the brief soaked up as much as 90% less.

So at the next accident, much of the wet has nowhere to go.

It sits against the skin, hour after hour, until the next change.

And wet cloth rubs on skin more than twice as hard as dry cloth does.

That is why so many mothers pull away at the change, even from the gentlest hands.

That is why a mother can get cream at every change for months and still have the rash come straight back.

The rash was never the real problem. The waterproofed brief was.

Not just her age.

And not Carol’s fault.

Carol had done exactly what Maggie would have told her.

A good thick layer, at every change.

Turn one over.

If it is a rash cream, the active ingredient is usually zinc oxide.

That part is fine. Zinc oxide is a dry white powder that protects chafed skin from wetness.

To make a cream, that powder has to be mixed into something.

That something is called the base.

Now read what the base is.

Petrolatum. Lanolin. Mineral oil. Wax.

Grease.

Grease does not dry. That is the whole point of it.

Put on thick, it is still grease at the next change, and much of it is on the brief.

And whatever is still on her skin has to be wiped off at the next change, over skin that is already raw.

That is the part that hurts.

Everything else in the drawer leaves the same problem.

The skin under the brief stays wet.

Thin cream or lotion? Little of it stays put. The brief wipes it away within hours.

Yeast cream? In a large hospital study, only about 1 in 7 of these rashes involved yeast.

When it is yeast, the yeast cream can help.

But the skin is still wet, so the rash can come back.

Powder? Dry until the first leak. Then it clumps, and the clumps sit wet against the skin.

Better briefs? One daughter bought the most expensive ones she could find.

The cream waterproofed those too.

Letting it air out? Nobody can leave her mother uncovered all day. She gets cold, and the bed gets soaked.

Every one of them works a little, then it is right back where it started.

That is why families stay stuck for years.

And almost nobody questions the thick layer, because the tube itself asks for it.

Turn a tube of Desitin or Boudreaux’s over one more time.

The directions say to put it on “liberally.”

At every change.

What Maggie needed was the zinc without the grease.

She had felt it on her own skin, as a little girl.

Calamine lotion. The pink bottle.

When she and Carol had chickenpox, their mother dabbed it on them with a cotton ball.

It went on wet.

It dried to a chalky pink layer while they stood there.

Calamine is zinc oxide.

The same zinc that is in those drugstore tubes, with a little iron oxide to turn it pink.

The big difference is the base.

Water and mineral clay instead of grease.

So the water dries off, and what is left on the skin is a dry film of zinc and clay.

Doctors have long used it to dry skin that is weeping.

A dry layer of zinc does the one thing no grease can.

It protects the skin and lets it dry at the same time.

But calamine has one flaw.

Once it dries, it does not stay put.

Maggie remembered pink chalk all over her pajamas and the sheets.

Fine for a few spots of poison ivy.

No use at all under a brief.

Maggie spent the next few nights searching online.

She found a company that makes natural skin remedies, Evelyn's Herbal Co.

They had spent six years of research on a single cream.

It took that long because one cream had to do three things at once.

It had to dry on, like the pink lotion.

It had to stay put until the next change. The pink lotion could not.

And it could not rub off onto the brief.

What they made is called Evelyn's Irritation Relief Cream.

It is the same zinc oxide that is in the Desitin and the Boudreaux’s.

The big difference is the base. Here the base is a mineral powder, not grease.

It spreads on like any cream.

About a minute later, it has dried to a soft powder on the skin.

It is not a loose powder sprinkled on top.

And unlike the pink lotion, it stays put under the brief until the next change.

The zinc sits between the skin and the next accident.

The thick creams end up on the brief. This one dries onto her.

So the brief can go back to soaking up the wet.

Protected and dry. Both at once.

And if you are thinking a thin layer cannot protect like a thick one, Maggie thought the same.

Thick had always meant safe to her.

Then she thought about that white smear inside the briefs.

Most of the thick layer had left the skin. It was on the brief.

What protects the skin is the part that stays on it.

And at the next change there is nothing greasy to scrub off.

A gentle clean, a thin layer, and done in about a minute.

Maggie got a tube to Carol the day it arrived. This is what Carol told her.

Night 1: “I put it on her at the bedtime change. At the morning change she didn’t say ‘stop’ once. I thought I was imagining it.”

Day 3: “The angry red had calmed down. And that sour smell was gone.”

Day 6: “The split closed over. She sat through a whole episode of her show without asking to lie down.”

Day 14: “I forgot to be scared of the next change. That’s the only way I can say it.”

That was Carol’s two weeks. Results vary, and everyone’s skin is different.

In the months after the wedding, Maggie passed the cream on to 47 more families she knew.

All of them had been fighting this for more than a year.

Most were daughters looking after a mother.

A few were wives looking after a husband.

Within a month, 41 of them said the rash was gone or nearly gone. Results vary.

Almost all of them noticed the same thing.

The changes had stopped being a fight.

“The rash was gone, but that was not the part that got me,” one daughter told her.

“She was back to her sweet self. In the middle of a change, she asked me how my day was.”

“I had to sit down in the hallway after.”

They said there was no paste to scrub off raw skin anymore.

Less bracing for “stop, it hurts.”

Less dread before the next change.

More than 17,200 people have used Evelyn's so far.

Count what this costs the daughters Maggie sees.

The creams and the powders, re-bought every month, for years.

The alarm set for 2 a.m. The brochure for the place they promised they would never use.

“Daughters think the goal is clear skin,” Maggie says.

“That is only half of it. The goal is a change where nobody cries.”

Six weeks after Carol stood in Maggie's kitchen, their mother went to her granddaughter's wedding.

She stayed until the last song.

Wet skin does not stay the same.

The longer it stays wet, the softer it gets, the easier it tears, and the closer it comes to breaking open.

And once it breaks open, it is much harder to heal.

Hospital patients with this rash were about five times as likely to also have a bed sore near the tailbone.

“The families who waited longest are the ones whose mothers end up in a nursing home like the one where I work,” Maggie says.

“That is the part I cannot fix for them.”

Evelyn's Irritation Relief Cream is made in small batches.

The team does not restock weekly, and a run of high demand empties the shelf.

Right now it is Buy 2 Get 1 Free, or Buy 3 Get 2 Free. You can also start with a single tube. Every order carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.

“I look after my mother who is 84 and in briefs full time. Changing her used to make her cry because the skin was so raw. Now she does not flinch. That is worth more than I paid.”

“I change my mother three times a day. Her skin has gone from angry to normal in three weeks and she no longer braces herself.”

“My mother is 96 and extremely frail. Most products are too harsh for her paper thin skin. This one she tolerates perfectly and her skin has healed.”

“My mother is happy. That is all I need to say. Ninety-one years old and she no longer complains when we change her.”