Double thickness fabric with 100% cotton flannel next to your face and cotton/poly outside fit well thanks to the deep pleats that expand over your nose and mouth. Cloth ties securely fasten the mask over your ears and under you chin to close gaps that might let in air. I know that this mask has kept airborne pathogens out of my respiratory space and protected my patients from me because since I started wearing this mask, I’ve stopped getting colds and flus, meaning I’ve stopped sharing them with patients during my asymptomatic viral shedding preludes.
Before masking for my work day as a dermatologist I was repeatedly sick with the cold and flu. My job entails spending hours in people’s faces; 10 inches from their faces because my magnification goggles focus precisely on their skin at 10 inches. Most of my dermatology work involves detecting and treating facial skin cancerous and precancerous growths meaning my patients and I share close range respiratory space – for better or worse. It was for worse until one year when I developed a really serious flu and decided to live in a mask at work. That changed everything. No more colds and flus over and over for me. Every flu I got I presumably shared with patients before I was sick. The mask stopped all that.
I started masking by using traditional paper medical masks but my sensitive skin complained with seborrhea, rosacea and contact dermatitis. I tried every medical mask on the market without improvement. The solution – ask the women who made the cloth exam gowns to work with me to design the perfect mask – and we did! They sewed The Bailey Model, as they call it, and I’ve never worn anything else. These masks are easily machine washed and dried to be reused over and over. They fit many face sizes and shapes. My husband now wears one, my friends want them and my seamstress and I are making them for you and your family.
I recommend you get two, one to wear and one to wash. I tie them over my face and when I need to lower it, I unloop it from my ears and fold the inner flannel side (I call it the ‘private side’) together. Only my hands touch the outer ‘public side’. After touching that side, of course the hands get washed or sanitized.
Be sure to tie it tight around your chin as that’s a sneaky area for respiratory droplets to enter your respiratory space. Wear your glasses to protect your eyes from virus (yes, as with all masks, they will fog up until they warm to your exhaled air temperature).
