I've now been using these patches for a week and a half, and while they didn't irritate my skin like the FemSeven patches came to do, there was at first a certain pinkness underneath the Estraderm patch which I wanted to understand before ordering an ongoing supply of them.
It seemed to be connected with puckering or crinkling around the circumference of the patch. If you'll excuse the appalling sight of my bulging tummy (actually, it's a distortion effect from using a wide-angle focal length on my camera), I can illustrate what I mean.
Obviously, I've pulled the waistband of my leggings down: normally, the patch is below that waistband so that it doesn't get rubbed.
You'll also appreciate how large these Estraderm patches are (and the FemSeven patches were much the same size). The old Estradot patches - which never gave me the slightest problem - were much smaller. I now think that because the FemSeven and Estraderm patches cover such a big area of skin, they are inherently likely to crinkle like this, due to inescapable flexing as I move about, or sit down. And that means the patch 'creeps' into its most stable position on that part of the skin, producing a corrugated look in some places around the edge. The skin at these points must get either pulled about or compressed, and that will induce some pinkness - seen very clearly in the next shot, when (after four days) I took that particular patch off:
Away from the edges, no pinkness. So the Estraderm patch wasn't stressing the skin there.
It seemed to me that if I could stick the next patch on a spot that wouldn't see a lot of flexing, I could avoid those edge-crinkles. Also, a spot that was flatter than my protuberant tummy: such as the upper part of the good old bum cheek.
Well, I was right. Here's the next patch, just about to be removed this morning after three days in place:
No edge-crinkles! And no edge-pinkness, either! It clearly did flex a bit across the centre, but without affecting the skin. There is a slight pink hue under most of the patch, which I put down to the the adhesive pulling on the skin. It faded as soon as the patch came off. It didn't leave a lasting tender red mark as the FemSeven patch had.
So I reckoned the Estraderm patches were going to be easy to live with.
A pity, however, that they are so large. Their size restricts where one can stick them. Another consequence is that the long, long edge of the patch collects much more black fluff from my knickers than the little Estradot patches ever used to. More toil to rub it off with baby oil and cotton-wool. Oh well. It's not a perfect world.
