Cracked skin should not be ignored. It can have serious health consequences. It turns out your epidermis is a barrier to infectious stuff that's all over the place. I've a friend that picked up an infection at the gym through a tiny little crack in the skin on one finger. Had it not been for his wife's insistence he go to the emergency room or urgent care, later that evening when the finger had gotten all sore and inflamed and swollen, he could have lost anything from that finger, to his hand, to his arm, to his life--it was that serious and progressed just that fast.And no this is not a weird meterosexual question at all. Sometimes, it gets so bad, I feel like I need treatment from my doctor.
IIRC, he spent five days in the hospital from that one tiny little crack in his skin--two or three days of that in isolation in the ICU.