Same Old Itchy Story

After having had a couple of manageable days after such a long stretch of bad ones, I'm in a bad way again. I have no idea what has caused the flare this time but I do know that it came on at about 10pm last night. The right hand side of my face went bright red and so, so itchy. I smothered myself in emollient ointment, white soft paraffin, took an antihistamine and off to bed I went. I woke up after an hour of not so deep sleep to find my face to be soaking wet. It was absolutely drenched with weeping skin. Mmmm. I was so tired that I just took a tissue and stuck it to the entire area so that it would absorb to the tissue and not my pillow. This morning I've woken up and my face is a bit grim. So yeah, not sure what to pinpoint as the culprit... and this is how it always is. I make diaries to document things I've done/ become exposed to, food I've eaten and my mood but there never seems to be a pattern. :(


 
 

Haha excuse the state of my hair. There's bed hair then there's my hair. Mental.

I'm just a little flakey

Just thought I'd show you all what I've been contending with for these past few mornings. Delicious flakes. Mmmm!


 
And a beautiful close-up...

 
"Oooh that's a keeper!" I think Gold Member from Austin Powers would be having a field day.

Documenting My Eczema 5th- 8th March 2013

So I'm back with my next installment of photographs from the 5th - 8th March. As I said last time, I apologise in advance for my facial expressions. Especially the one from this morning. I really struggled to keep my eyes open haha!

              Morning 5th                                              Evening 5th

Morning of the 6th (seem to have forgotten to get one for the evening -oops!)

     Morning of the 7th : Evening of the 7th (Shane was making me laugh, despite the state of my skin!)

Morning of the 8th

So as you can see last night was especially bad for me and I have to retire early to have a nice relaxing shower/ bath and it's still not brilliant this morning. Hmpf.

Photographing Eczema Daily 01/03

So staying true to my word, I have started to take photographs of my skin, seconds after waking up on a morning and just before I hop into bed on a night time. I decided to take the photographs of just my face because even though I suffer with eczema from head to toe, a) it tends to be more prominent on my face and b) I think it would be a bit rude and too much to take full body photographs of myself, especially because a lot of people I know will read this. Not only this, but I'm unable to even wear underwear some days so yeah, a pretty impossible task really...

Beware though, I've taken photos to show just how it is, so there's no Photoshopping and I'm probably blinking or pulling some pained "I've just woken up" or whatever expression as they literally were taken seconds after getting out of bed. This camera also isn't the greatest either. I would use my fancy DSLR but I've lost the charger :(

01/03/2013 Morning Photo

01/03/2013 Night Photo

It isn't too bad in these pictures, my skin tends to pale out when I sleep. I'm guessing that's something to do with my nervous system? But you can certainly see some of the dryness on my face.

The night time photo you can see I'm starting to get a bit blotchy. I tend to be really itchy when I get in from work. I guess it's just being exposed to a level of dust there. But yeah, my hair is a mess from scratching my scalp. Naughty! You can also see some yummy skin dandruff on my black vest top too. The joys of dermatitis.

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I've been taking Mycophenolate for a week now. Can't really report any changes really. I had a bad flare on Wednesday that made me housebound and unable to dress for the majority of the day and my skin has been very dry but I'm going to put that down to the light therapy as that is one of the side effects. I'm back to being a human pin cushion which doesn't exactly fill me with joy. I'm completely used to having blood tests but I'll still forever flinch as the needle goes into my arm. Stupid reflexes.

Hope everyone is doing OK :)