Photo of Eczema Skin 5 Months Topical Steroid Withdrawal

I've had a few people ask how I'm doing lately so I figured I'd give a brief photo update.

Overall my skin is remaining white, it's just very dry and does go the palest shade of pink after rubbing on my face. I'm covered in tiny little wounds from scratching but they're so tiny and it's really just from the dryness that they've occurred. My skin is thick enough now that it doesn't cause weeping when I give it a good old scratch, just tiny nicks here and there that scab over and I naughtily pick them off.

 You can see the dryness is predominantly on my eye area and cheeks. My lips have been horribly dry too. You can also detect the skin flakes on my t-shirt. Yum! Oh and my eyebrows are becoming a little bit sparse again but I reckon that's because the skin isn't moisturised enough to hold in the hairs so when I have a scratch because they're so brittle they fall out easily.

Closer version

Closer side view

Mostly white tummy/hands except for some naughty scratching which has created the aforementioned small scabs. I haven't had matching hands for a while now so this is nice to see. My hands were also covered in hard skin last month which took ages to get rid of and although they're dry as a bone the skin feels relatively normal.

There still isn't much difference occurring in my legs. I just can't leave them alone :( I'm so bad. Telling the world about my picking habit obviously did nothing mentally for me. If it wasn't so cold right now I'd parade around in shorts so that everytime I caught myself in the mirror I'd feel ashamed.

But there you have it, a mini update from me! I think I attribute the dryness of my skin to the cold weather. It has been extremely windy and in fact we were down in Portsmouth this past weekend when the winds were a good 30mph. That obviously has done nothing to revive my poor skin.

Hope everyone is well :)

Topical Steroid Withdrawal Insanity

Today I had the morning from hell. I can't even begin to exemplify how much pain I was in. I ended up going rather crazy, enduring moments of actual psychosis because I couldn't stop scratching, I couldn't stop hurting, and I couldn't get any hot water to relieve my torment.

Somehow during the moment of sheer insanity I managed to snap some photos. The camera has made them look quite tame in comparison to how I actually was. My skin was yellow from dry ooze yet weeping near-constantly over skin that had gone rock solid like botox. It was a pretty grim sight.

The rest of my body is covered in softer red blotchy skin, bar my arms which are like leather and show the typical bright white palms versus the red arm, shedding like crazy. I think the reason I'm not bright red all over is down to the antibiotics.

My wrists have swollen today. My Mum instantly drew to the conclusion of cellulitis but it's not edema based, they've just lost their definition. Suppose it's from over scratching and wearing tubegrips. The weeping on my face is slightly odd in that I look as though I'm completely covered in grazes but that's where the skin has been weeping. I haven't scratched these areas so the graze is a bit scary.

Luckily I now have 3 days to recover til I'm next needed at work so I hope to God I start seeing some improvements somewhere soon. I know it's gonna take a while seeing as I'm only just over a month into withdrawal but I really need to work.

Friday May 31st

*Be warned that there are some potentially NSFW images in this post.*

So on Friday I went to hospital and ended up being there for 3 bloody hours!!! My appointment was at 10:40 but I wasn't seen until an hour and a half later. I then had to get my blood pressure done, go for bloods, a new prescription of Ciclosporin and produce a urine sample which my bladder didn't want to cooperate with. Because I was there for so long I was unable to have a shower before work, leaving me in a right old state. So as you can see by the images below, it was not pretty.

I suppose I should tell you what happened when I saw my derm. Well he told me he read a bit of the article I gave him on Red Skin Syndrome but didn't find it particularly credible - thanks bud! Luckily my derm nurse seems to find it intriguing enough to look into though, so I shall share these articles and blogs etc. with her. 

I've decided to give Ciclosporin a 3rd chance whilst I withdraw because there is no way I will be able to continue to go to work whilst flaring seeing as I'm finding it difficult enough at present with the state I'm in. I'm completely zapped of energy which isn't helped by the fact that I've had to go to work for 6 days in a row and won't get a break on my days off as they are filled with things that need to be done. Ugh. I need to relax. It takes so much effort to preen myself for a short shift at work and by the time I'm home I'm scratching myself to pieces. Really not nice.

Without further ado - here are the promised pictures. Don't be too freaked out by my near-nakedness.

(L-R) Body; Chest, tummy, arms; Tummy/ above underwear line

(L-R) Tummy; Back of knee; Breast; Arm

A truly grimacing sight. 

My belly is so ridiculously awful. It actually looks like an old woman's tummy due to the loss of elasticity. My poor skin.

I'm also pretty wound up today because some complete moron randomly reversed into my car whilst we were waiting at traffic lights. Luckily there's only minor damage but I'm still hacked off. I didn't have a straight thinking head, and even less so because I was dying for a shower so I didn't get his contact details for if anything does occur later on. I swear people just like to vandalise my car for the hell of it. Must have a retard magnet on it somewhere...