9 MONTHS

Confession. I’ve been locked out of my godaddy account since before Christmas and I simply haven’t had the motivation to do a quick email search to find my login details and write a new blog. Apologies. I’ve been out having fun and stuff without really thinking too much about my skin.

A lot has happened in the last two months! Firstly, my legs are now on….….. ONCE EVERY OTHER DAY! No issues at all! I’ve had two minor flares during the last 2 months, both mostly on my neck. My forehead has also been a little disappointing for most of it due to the number of holiday-season (look how Americanised I am! [still refuse to use a z though.]) make-up-required occasions and the cold weather. Also, I really like wearing woolly hats and they invariably make it worse, but hey ho, compromises.

In December, I mixed my first batch of compound on my own  It was kind of nerve-wracking at first and I worried it might all go terribly wrong, but I had videos with pharmacists’ methods to follow and lots of advice from other patients, so all turned out alright! Slightly messy though…

So the first flare happened mid-December. I went to Ascot Races and came back to a family party at my friends’ house. His mum had hired a huge buffet meal with caterers, but by the time we go there the only things left were French sticks and an 18” slab of brie. I avoided the brie, but was hungry enough to eat a piece of French stick… lol, JK, I ate in excess of 12 pieces of French stick. Oops. I shall refer to this as The Great Bread Binge of ’15. On the night, I was fine, which encouraged me to eat even more, but the next day I woke up with a nice little flare on my neck. Within a week, it was gone.

Christmas came and went with no issues; apart from Christmas morning when my dad decided to serve me a buttered bacon sandwich despite knowing that I have to eat dairy and gluten-free. His annoyance at my ‘fussiness’ and comments to “just scrape [the melted butter] off the bacon” had me on the brink of a Christmas breakdown. But no, nobody is allowed to argue on Christmas. I had curry for breakfast instead – win! 

I got looooooooads of health-related stuff for Christmas which was amazing, including lots of cotton clothes, a bullet to make smoothies and sauces in and a huge hamper of free-from foods – highlight being dairy-free chocolate spread (oh, Nutella, how I have missed you!). Subsequently, that 10lbs I lost due to the new diet has been firmly reinstated upon my thighs.

For NYE, we went to Copenhagen. I tried some gluten-free beer (only 50p?!?!) which was actually really nice. What wasn’t really nice was the cold. The cold is not good for me. I had another minor flare on neck, scalp and face, but everything else went just dandily. Hoorah!

I’m now in the process of tapering my arms down to 3x a day. As if!! It’s taken so long to get to this point that a few weeks ago I would have guffawed at the thought! No teething problems so far so let’s just hope I can keep it up (posting on this blog does seem to jinx it though…). I’ve had some inexplicable itchiness (no flare though) on my lower back and sides with a little discolouration so I went back up to 2x daily and now tapering back down to 1x a day. Come to think of it, it’s probably due to my parents having some work done on the house which has resulted in me being surrounded by dust whenever I’m there.

COME ON SKIN, WE CAN DO THIS!