Skinny Skin Skin

I've reached another plateau of decent skin. My legs are still pretty horrendous, covered in patchy bright red scabs, but oddly they feel smooth like the rest of my skin so I'm not sure if they're just going to scar instead. It'd be just my luck if they do!

A lifelong aim of mine has been to be able to wear shorts outside sans tights/leggings. Last year I managed to lose a load of weight which made my legs a much better shape and I knew I wouldn't be scared to show them off. This summer however obviously hindered my chances of following through with my little goal because my legs have been riddled with infection and nastiness. This doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon, but now summer is seemingly over here in the UK, there's always next year to try to aim for.

I find it funny that it's only bad on the insides of my legs. The outside is pretty much unscathed. I wonder why it has manifested itself in such a way? Hmm.

(Sorry for rubbish phone pictures!)

Tomorrow is my birthday! I will be 24 years old which sounds scary to me. A lot of people don't realise I am this age so it's a bit of a shock for them too. If you'd like to be nice and celebrate my birthday with me you can donate a little to Shane's 1000km Challenge: http://www.justgiving.com/shanes1000km it'd mean so much to both of us! Alternatively if you don't like the idea of putting your details on Justgiving you can text "RACE55 £2" to 70070.

Oh and I also took a sneaky photo of my hospital file the other day. To put this into perspective, I've only been visiting this hospital since around Jan 2010. It's huge!

Hope everyone is well!!

TSW - Reek of Putrefaction

So I seem to have gotten pretty much over the constant oozing. It was so vile and smelt worse than any other time I've oozed in the past. Absolutely rank! I actually felt nauseous whenever I got a big whiff of it which was near constantly. Blergh! Not to everyone's tastes but this song by death metal band, Carcass, has a pretty apt title, hence why I decided to use it... Glad the ooze has seemingly diminished now anyway.

I'm still really bad though, and up until yesterday it was still spreading like crazy through pus filled bumps. I still have a lot of them but have also endured a bit of peeling too. I attribute this to trying to keep my skin as dry as possible. It hurt like hell not moisturising the creases of my arms, legs and neck but I read somewhere that to stop bacterial wetness from spreading you must dry out the area. With the area being my entire body this has been no mean feat and I've had to surrender to sitting/ laying down in one position on the couch. Today I have finally allowed my body moisture so we'll see how this pans out.

Shane took a couple of photos the other night but despite the phrase "a picture speaks a thousand words" I don't think it does at all because it hasn't been able to capture the full extent of my sufferings. You can however see the skin has literally puckered though.  It was SO dry and cracked!

In other news Talkhealth Partnership, who I also blog for about my condition, got into contact with me asking if I'd like to write my eczema story for them to feature in this month's newsletter. Of course I obliged! So you can read that here: My Eczema Story on Talkhealth. I also have some other great news in the pipeline but I'll keep tight lipped about that until it happens.

Happy healing everyone!

Day 102 - The MRSA Rages On...

I think the MRSA has reared its ugly head again, or I've gone and got myself yet another infection.

I woke up fine yesterday morning, we did our raffle at 2:30 in the afternoon (well done to all the winners!), all was fine until 3pm when we went to leave for Shane's race and I just started feeling icky and itchy all over. An hour later I'm covered from head to toe in a pimply rash. Literally head to toe. Last night I took a recommended bleach bath hoping that would kill some of it off but it's even worse today.

I've been feeling feverish, and even a bath wouldn't warm me up until I filled it with scalding water. I've also been more asleep than awake today. Not good at all. Gonna pop along to my favourite place on earth tomorrow (hospital) to see what can be done. I think with MRSA you're supposed to continue taking the antibiotics until all sign of infection has gone, which despite looking good, it hadn't really... I was only given a 2 week course.

All I can smell is the acrid stench of ooze as though my body is rotting. I feel dreadful. :(

Sorry for not taking any close-up pictures of the pimples themselves but after my arm started literally dripping with ooze I ran up for a bath.

  Holding the tissue as I was trying to dab some of the oozing areas Ankle looks worrying again    Weeping knee and sexy skin... Gonna put the next ones under a cut: NSFW