Flaky, rough skin on neck with hairs growing from it

**Ritzcracker** · 07-31-2012, 04:02 PM

I have some kind of skin condition in an area on my neck. This area of skin is dry, rough, and somewhat flaky. It is also itchy. When it gets irritated (by scratching), it is reddish/purple-ish. When it isn't irritated, it is close to, but not quite, regular skin color. The strangest thing about it is, there is hair growing there in a way that's different from the hair on the rest of my neck. The (body) hair on most of my neck is normal, less than a quarter inch long and barely visible. The hair on the affected patch of skin, however, is almost an inch long, and quite visible. Nowhere else on my neck has hair like that, so I assume it is related to the skin condition.

Here is a picture of the region in an irritated state. The weird hair on it is unfortunately not visible in the blurry picture.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...inproblem.jpg/

**pepsimax** · 07-31-2012, 08:29 PM

Hello Will and welcome to the forum.
Just to step in before the more experienced members do. If you could post a clearer picture it may help with ideas of what it could be. Also you say it itches. Does anything, like heat, water, etc contribute to it itching? How long have you had it?
If you can answer these it may help others.

**Ritzcracker** · 08-01-2012, 02:06 AM

That may be the best picture my phone can take; I'll get my video camera in a while (possibly tomorrow--it's at another house currently) and see if I can get a better one. I'm not sure if it can take very clear pictures of something close up, but I'll see.

The itching comes and goes. I don't believe that water or heat affects it. I'm not sure if I know about anything in particular that makes it start itching or itch worse. I've had it for a month or two. I only noticed the skin growing from it a week ago. I recently made an appointment to see a dermatologist--originally for a persistent fungus infection, but I'll have him look at this too.

I have a fungus infection on my neck and several other places as well, a few inches away; the fungus infection has come and gone for about a year. I've been applying econazole, probably with less persistence than I ought to have. The fungus infection is also rough when it shows up, although it is not very flaky and does not have such hair growing from it. It is perpetually reddish whenever it's "active," whereas the other skin condition is close to but not the same as regular skin tone and still flaky when un-irritated, and is more reddish-purplish when irritated.

Because of the differences, I'm inclined to be skeptical it's related to the other skin condition (or if it is, it doesn't seem to be the *same* thing) but I could be dead wrong.