Life's an Itch

Here I am, blogging again.

I ran a fairly successful blog over at www.thatsquirrel.com but stopped after almost a year when my skin, which had been teetering on the edge of healthy for months, blew up into a disgusting flare in January which is still blazing on now. A chronic lack of sleep and inability to concentrate on sitting still and writing for more than a few minutes at a time led to my poor blog descending into neglect.

I’m about to start a new treatment – one that’s been hailed as extraordinarily magical – and I want to document it just in case it’s different from all the other extraordinarily magical treatments in the world and actually turns out to be extraordinarily magical.

The treatment is led by Dr Aron, a South African dermatologist with a sizeable following of mums on Facebook. At first, I saw them proclaiming him a healer on eczema support groups and thought they must all be nutty hippie types, brainwashed into believing some rare Fijian herb would be the answer to all of their prayers.

But nay, further research and reading some of the mums’ blogs (which featured images of eczema-laden children suffering so badly that they brought tears to my eyes more than once) made me realise that Dr Aron doesn’t use any new ingredients, he just prescribes them diluted so that they can be used more long term. Strong steroids are advised against as a long term solution by the majority of doctors since they can have adverse effects if used too extensively, but abruptly stopping them will (in my experience always) lead to the eczema returning with a vengeance within a day. In my case, the answer to this was 4 years daily use of topical immuno-suppressants, which has just as many (if not worse) possible side effects and I soon became dependent.

Dr Aron treats the staph infection itself by diluting weaker potency steroids and topical antibiotics so that they can be used for a longer period of time and tapered off gradually when the skin is able to cope. Most of his patients end up just treating spots when they pop up every now and again; some go into remission.

So here I sit, clutching the (bloody expensive – £60!!) compound of emollient with a dash of antibiotic/steroid cream which has been tailored to me based on my severity, weight and age, and I’m just itching to try it. Literally.

However, I can’t wear makeup during the course of treatment, which will be at least a few months, so I’m savouring today as the last opportunity to socialise without social discomfort added to my physical discomfort. That being said, it’s still hard to act like you’re enjoying a round at the pub when you can see bits of skin flaking before your eyes right into your pint.

Treatment starts tomorrow; wish me luck!