Hello Stranger (ver 2)

Hi, long time no post.

Firstly apologies for the lack of updates! I just realised that I have not posted anything for the past 1.5 years. When I was deep in the throes of TSW, I remember clearly how reliant I was on the blog posts of others as a means of reassuring myself that I wasn’t alone. Yet here I am not having provided the same form of comfort I once so eagerly craved. Sorry!

Skin update

Where do I start?

Skin has been good. Not fantastic. Not 100%. But pretty good.

There are various ways that others use to gauge how good their skin is: the length of time since the last flare, the intensity of the flare, level of discomfort etc. For me, one of the  ways I like to use to measure how good my skin has been is the amount of time I have dedicated to thinking about my skin and how much my skin has affected my daily life. For clarity, I am only talking about my facial skin and my scalp now because other areas have not provided me with any issues at all over the last year.

Right at the start of this journey, I would say that my skin and its condition dictated around 80-90% of my daily activity. This slowly (and if the bold font isn’t clear enough, I do mean slowly haha) dropped to around the 5% mark as of today. This is to be expected given that it has now been 3 years and 1 month since I embarked on TSW.

I remember that when it first started, showers were an absolute nightmare and I very much dreaded having one because of the way my skin would split open once finished. Showers are now a normal activity and I don’t have to think twice about the aftereffects. I used to avoid catching up with friends because I hated the thought of them seeing myself in that state. Or even if I were to arrange a coffee, I would try to align it with the good phase of my skin. I now don’t give a second thought to arranging activities with friends. In other words, I can freely plan events ahead of time without having to fret about the possibility of a flare.

However there is still that 5% as mentioned above which is centred around my facial skin. Given where my skin has been, this 5% really consists of trivial discomforts but it includes things like eyebrow hair that has not completely grown back, thinner hair on areas of my scalp that I used to scratch quite viciously and the occasional itch (especially when the weather turns hots). Another thing that has been bugging me as well is a raised area above both of my eyebrows that is causing wrinkles to appear on my forehead. I’m not sure if this is a residue of all the scratching on that area but both sides are more raised than normal. My suspicion is that it is still slightly inflamed however it has been a long period of time and other areas of my body aren’t inflamed so am not entirely sure what the cause is.

In saying this, my skin did flare two times over 2016. The first time was in February and it lasted until April. The second occasion was in June/July and it likewise lasted for around 2 months. The first flare was a typical flare for me which involved patches around my eyes weeping (albeit smaller and less intense), really flaky scalp, and sensitive patches around other parts of the face. I’m certain that this flare was stress induced because it started at the same time when I first started work. It was a period of adjustment for me and I was conscious of the stress I was feeling. However the second flare must have just been a normal cycle as I cannot attribute it to anything else. When I say that it was subdued, I mean that I could feel my skin getting more sensitive and flaking at times but yet there were no open weeping wounds.

Other than that, skin has been great and I truly can’t complain. I sometimes still like to rub my face and feel how smooth it is! I would like to say that it is as smooth as a baby’s bum but that would not be doing justice to my skin…..Sorry. Bad joke.

Reflecting back on the past year, it is truly amazing to think of the things that I was able to do without worrying about the repercussions. Things like going for a run and drinking alcohol, all the way to washing my face with water. Really simple things that many take for granted. I must remind myself to not do the same.

Last update skin wise would have to be the fact that I have been seeing a dermatologist. This alone is filled with so much irony because I firmly believe that it was a dermatologist’s negligence who got me addicted to steroids in the first place. But at the persistence of my family, I obliged. Suffice to say that this dermatologist is willing to acknowledge that TSW exists and is understanding to my concerns about using any further steroids. In fact, she recently went to Japan for a conference which touched on this issue and what solutions dermatologists in Japan were using to treat the over-use of topical steroids. But her patience has a limit and I do worry that my attitude and stubbornness is stretching that limit. Despite that I will continue to see her, if anything to prove to her that my underlying eczema can naturally get better with time and that steroids are not a longterm solution. It will be interesting to see what she will have to say for the upcoming consultations.

Closure

With that out of the way, I wonder whether I will continue to update this blog going forward. My rationale behind this is that I don’t believe I am going through TSW anymore or that even if I am going through it, the effect is so minimal that I will not have much to update. If and when anything significant occurs, I will come back and provide readers with an update. But I really hope that there will not be a reason for that.

If anyone has any questions about my experiences or just needs to have a chat, please leave a comment and I will try to respond to it in a timely manner! I understand how crucial a listening ear can be through this period and I will attempt to check back on a regular basis.

On that note, I’ll leave you with a few pictures of myself over the past year. I have chosen photos that aren’t exactly flattering but provide a picture of what my facial skin has been like. So please excuse some of the bad photos or backgrounds haha.

Like many who have gone through this experience, my experience has shown that it can and does get better. Hang in there.

 

Hello Stranger

Well hello haha. Writing something out here feels somewhat like meeting a friend long forgotten about until one certain day when you happen to bump into them.

This must be the end of month 20 by now? But at this stage, who’s really counting?

By the lengthy period of absence, someone could reasonably induce that the lack of updates must signify a lack of things to update about. And by and large, that would be a fair conclusion. Within the last 6 months of so, my skin has been relatively stable such that even when it flared it did not stop me in my tracks. Skin was its best sometime around early March which continued into April where it went downhill for the month of May (neither the humidity nor the unhealthy food in Singapore had much of an effect on the skin). At its worst, this meant noticeable itch around the same troublesome spots, and the reddening of the face. To my surprise and delight, the face did not ooze much, if any, during this flare. I took this as a really encouraging sign as, in my view, it heralds in another stage in healing; flaring without oozing.

I have come to the realisation that TSW has been and will be a much longer ride than expected. Looking back, I remember anticipating the 1 year mark as I took it to signify either the end, or at least the very final stages, of TSW. However that has not turned out to be case as TSW stretched itself into the 1.5 year mark with no clear finish line. If I’m to be truthfully honest, I would say that TSW would stretch itself out into the 2+ year period until I will be finally done with it. And by that I mean completely without symptoms such as itch, redness of the face, cysts whatnot. In saying that, i feel that I have passed a threshold where I can claim that TSW and its symptoms do not affect the decisions in my daily life. I eat like a normal person (with limits of course. Still try to stay away from too much alcohol or pre-packaged food), sleep according to my timing, shower in really hot water when the weather warrants it (some part of New Zealand just reached -20 centigrade last night brrr) and am able to plan for the future. This has most definitely been the case in the last 6 months of so and I don’t envisage it changing. Thus the fact that I flared without oozing was important to me because based on a roughly uphill trajectory, flaring in the future will be much more comfortable.

I feel like there’s a lot more I could share but am finding it difficult to find any coherent structure to share it in so I guess I will end with this: I’m not done with TSW nor is it done with me. But I feel like I have largely got my life back from the monster that has stolen it and I hope to be able to make up for lost time.

If you have any questions or want to know more about what I’ve been through, feel free to drop a comment or read through my previous pasts as despite the lack of detail, they are depictive of my story and journey through TSW. Hoping the best for all those going through it right now!

End of Month 15

Hi all, long time no talk.

So here I am at the end of month 15. Although it’s been stated many times over, I could never have imagined making it to this day when I first started. But yet here I am. If you are someone who’s stumbled upon this blog and are just starting out on your TSW journey, I hope that you gain some courage and hope from this; the days may seem long at the moment but it gets better.

In brief, the last two months have followed a ‘U” shape where my skin is concerned. At the start of November, it wasn’t in a good state as I believe that I was still suffering from the tail end of my second flare. For a few weeks my face was a little weepy, red and fragile in general. However when the Christmas and New Year’s break came around, my skin started to show signs of improvement including less weeping, minimal shedding and more smoothness across my body. My belief is that it correlates to the lack of stress as I was on the Christmas break of my summer internship, allowing me a chance to catch a breath and put down my worries. Skin was great over that period to the point where I started to catch signs of normal skin peeking through on my face. This also meant that an assortment of other symptoms eased up; showers were much less of a chore than they have been as my face did not weep coming out of them. Overall I could not have complained with the general uptick on quality of life despite it still being sub-par for a person with normal skin.

I do like to think that I am much less susceptible to any further flares having traversed so far on my TSW journey. I don’t mean that I will NOT have any further flares but that even if I do, it will be much more manageable and sustained than the previous two flares. Having resigned to the fact that I am not in control of this monster, I am much more at ease letting it do what it needs to do at this point in my TSW.

In saying that I am still maintaining a relatively clean diet – I have distinctly made sure to stay away from foods high in MSG and sugar. Likewise, I am consuming a lot more vegetables and a lot less carbohydrates than I am used to. I have supported this with vitamins and supplements taken on a daily basis. Although I am not able to attribute any differences in skin from this diet + supplementary regime, I still intend on continuing down this route for general health purposes.

Another point of note is my upcoming trip to Singapore in just under a month’s time. Having suffered a mini flare when I was there last, it would be interesting to see how my skin reactions to the difference in environment. I will report back when I return.

That’s all for now. In general life is much more enjoyable than before and I hope that it only improves from here on in. If I haven’t covered anything in my blog posts that you would me to shed light on, I’m more than happy to answer them in the comments section of posts. Apart from that, I hope that everyone else is going well too.

In the absence

So first off, I’d like to apologise for the long hiatus. I had always intended to provide at least a monthly update as a way of both informing future TSW fighters out there what my journey was like, and as a means of providing a diary for myself. I’m not too sure where the past three months or so passed by; it just happened so quick. So I guess it’s time for a skin update:

Within the past three months, I experienced another flare around the month 11 mark. It crept up on me very slowly such that only hindsight was able to show me the warning symptoms. It started off with the little signs such as an increase in itchiness on my ears and an increase of symptoms on my index finger. From there, it blossomed into a full flare albeit much more manageable than the preceding ones. Although I experienced the typical symptoms (ooze on face, itchiness across most of my still troublesome areas) I for one didn’t have a bloated face which I was thankful for. This meant that even if the symptoms were more prominent on my face, I was still able to have the courage to face the world once the day progressed (the symptoms on my face usually subside in their aggressiveness by the afternoon if I leave it alone after my morning wash up).

The same trouble spots still remain. Largely this is to mean my face, a few fingers on my right hand (primarily my index and middle finger), scalp, neck and upper body. My upper body is still in the same condition that it was a few months ago. The flare only really affected the parts of my body from my shoulder upwards.

So in summary, although I did experience another flare, it was liveable and I still went about my activities as per ‘normal’; or at least as normal as I have been able to. Good promising sign? I do hope so.

That said I have finally crossed the 1 year mark! Despite having crossed such a big milestone, I feel that the occasion was buried beneath my flare and exams that I was sitting at the time; I didn’t quite feel the euphoria that I had imagined. If I’m honest, I would also add that I was a bit disappointed to still be at my current situation with my skin at this milestone. I really had imagined that by this time of the journey, I’d be able to look back and be thankful that I am clear of any symptoms; be thankful that it’s all over. However reality often has a way of dashing the dreams conjured up in our state of hope.

In contrast, I am still thankful for how far I’ve come. I can still remember the feeling of being wet and sticky all over whilst lying in bed. The constant smell that oozed out from the wounds all over my body and how the ooze used to feel when it was all dried up in my hands. And that insatiable itch.

Even despite the symptoms I still have now, I am able to sleep well throughout the night. I am able to dress in clothes without having to worry about the ooze. I am able to have a shower without dreading the inevitable open wounds that would result.

I recently made a comment to my mum to the effect that there are so many small (and large) aspects of what I’ve been through this year that it’d be hard to list each and every single one. And I guess that that’s part of the journey in this TSW recovery. That over time, many of them will disappear until one day the list will be clear. I’m still looking forward and eagerly waiting for that day. Until that day, I will still try and live out my life as much as possible.

Next milestone – 2 year mark! Haha I feel a bit greedy having just crossed that one year mark but we all have to have something to look forward to right?

Hope everyone is getting better slowly but surely.

End of month 10!

10 months down, 2 more until I hit the 1 year mark, and ‘x’ more until I’m healed. 

Skin update:

Face has been doing okay as of late. By okay, I mean that it has had minimal oozing and flaking. A layer of skin roughly flakes off every day or two whereas when in a flare, I’d have a new layer twice a day. There are two spots that are however quite persistent in regular oozing and flaking; left cheekbone and right eyelid. These spots are quite sensitive in that scratching will definitely result in ooze coming out. Apart from those spots, I can be quite liberal with my scratching but not cause any ooze to come out. In saying that though, I know not to tempt fate and only scratch to flake off dead skin. A good positive is that it has been less red recently and seems to be more of a brown colour with some pink accents shining through. 

Something that I just realised a few nights ago is that my face hasn’t been itchy (and actually hasn’t been so for a long while). Despite that, the elephant skin and ooze spots still remain. I’d have thought that the two symptoms would go hand in hand but I guess the itch can leave first leaving behind the skin to heal?

Body and armpits are doing fine. To give some point of reference, they feel like they did around the June mark before I left for the overseas trip. I still itch from time to time but scratching likewise doesn’t cause any ooze. 

Elbow folds similarly are also doing fine. There are still some pink raised areas but to an unobservant observer, it wouldn’t be of much interest. Spring’s starting to come around here where I am so I’m glad that I’ll be able to wear tshirts without too much concern for elbow fold exposure. 

Last area of interest would be the scalp which with all the over areas, is also doing fine. It does itch and flake off from time to time but there’s no ooze which I’m quite thankful for. The cleanliness (relatively of course) of my pillow cover is proof of this. I can still remember when I was going through the worst of it, my pillow cover would have ooze marks all over from a few nights worth of sleep. 

If it already isn’t obvious, in general, I’m feeling fine/okay with my skin. I think having come out of the flare that I was in over the late July period, I’m relatively happy to be where I am. Skin in general just feels like it’s in a calm period, just like how it was in June. The only noticeable difference would be my face which is less red and more stable. I guess the fact that I’m able to function and perform like an ordinary person for most of the day is good enough for me at the moment. With the knowledge that I might be in for a longer haul than I had initially expected, I’m learning (with difficulty haha) to cherish the calm periods. Again I just hope though that in two months time, it will show improvements to the point where I won’t be overly concerned about making first impressions on new people for my internship. 

Nothing else is coming to mind at the moment. Sorry for the lack of thoughts/update but I’ve got a fair bit of work to chow through so I guess that’s all for now. Will update again at the half month mark with photos if I can. Hope everyone else is doing well =)

Month 9.5 update

Hi all

Just wanted to come back here to do a quick update on the skin for both documentation purposes and to update those who are following. 

So skin update:

Face is a little bit better than at the start of the month. It’s mostly less red than before and is also shedding a minimal amount of skin. I usually only wash off dead skin during my daily shower. Apart from that, I hardly feel the need to shed off dead skin. Interestingly the skin on my face still produces a lot of oil as it has always done so I’m not sure if that’s a sign of good things to come or whether I just produce an abnormally large amount of oil. Still have a couple of oozy spots after I come out from the shower but apart from that, face is dry and pinkish most of the day. 

The insides of my elbows are still as they were at the beginning of the month; that is to say there’s still the elephant skin on there with some red patches. It’s gotten a little bit better than at the start of the month but it’s still not at the condition where I’d be confident wearing a tshirt outside. It has dried up more though and scratching doesn’t produce as much ooze as it did before. Sadly scratching still produces that orgasmic feeling (scratching feels so good but is so bad). 

Body is largely the same. Nothing much to update as there hasn’t been any noticeable change. 

I think that I may have had a mini flare with the armpits some days back as they started to get oozy and moist even during the day. That only lasted about a day or two though and they’ve become drier and more ‘normal’ since. Talking about mini flares, I also think that I experienced one yesterday as my face was shedding more than normal. Maybe it’s something I ate?

Only other place that’s stlll affected is my neck and scalp but they’re largely alright and not really causing me any problems. They both do get itchy at times but scratching doesn’t cause oozing or any other side effects. Still shedding some skin though. 

That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll have something more positive to report back at the end of the month =)

 

End of Month 8

Another month down, another update to add to my list of posts.

 

So as I usually do, we first have a skin update:

I’ve now come out of the flare that I had at the beginning of the month. From start to end, that flare probably lasted around 2-3 weeks. Although the intensity of the flare was no where near the same as the flare I had at the beginning, I feel that it still hit me harder. For those other TSW people out there, I think they will be able to attest to the mental challenge that we encounter at the later stages of our recovery. Thus although the flare was manageable, it was the feeling of helplessness + the feeling of taking a step back after months of calm skin that really got to me.

Body wise, my skin is primarily back at the condition it was prior to the flare. That is to say that there are no oozing spots but rather dry and ‘patchy’ skin that itches a few times a day. For most of the day I can go by fine without feeling any itch. However come night time, I usually get the itch once or twice a night. In saying that, the skin colour has lightened up a bit and isn’t as red as it was pre-flare.

A spot that is still causing some trouble is the inside of the elbows. They itch quite a bit during the day to the point where scratching produces that orgasmic feeling which I’m sure many will be able to relate to. It is still quite red at times and irritated. I’m glad that the cold weather here means that I can cover that part up; hopefully it relents by the time spring/summer weather rolls around.

Fingers are still mostly fine despite having flared a bit during the flare. There’s a small patch near my right wrist that doesn’t seem to want to go away however it does seem to be slowly going away.

Another part of interest would be my neck which seems to have smoothened a lot; TSW symptoms have eased up a far bit. Skin is largely smooth and hardly sheds. I’m also told that it looks quite normal to the unobservant observer. My spotless pillow can attest to this as prior to the flare, I used to get spots of ooze on my pillow from my neck.

Lastly, my face, like most of my body has gone back to its pre-flare state. My forehead to a large extent hardly sheds and is smooth for a little while after I shower (where I wash the dead skin away). Oozy spots do tend to appear after my shower (probably attributable to me trying to wash the dead skin off too hard) but they get better after some time. On that note, skin sheds maybe about once a day. What I mean by that is that I don’t get a feeling to need to wash off dead skin until a full day has more or less passed.

Despite these symptoms, for a large part I am able to go out and attempt to live life as per normal. I say attempt because the condition of my face still haunts me like an overhanging cloud for most of my day. But I still try to strive on. For the most part though I’m glad that the flare ended just as uni started back.

At the moment I don’t have much more than a skin update to talk about. Right now an immediate wish of mine is that my face will be alright when I start my summer internship in some months time.

 

Hope everyone else out there is doing fine =) Till the next post.

#Rant

As titled, I felt the need to rant. So if you’re not in the mood for reading a post with a negative twist, this as a warning to turn away now. However I just need to get this out of my system.

So unlike what I had thought previously, I’m experiencing a second flare at the moment. This is in contradiction to my previous posts and line of thinking that I wouldn’t have a second flare so long as I didn’t apply any creams or eat anything that would definitely cause a flare. Up to this date, I still have not been applying any creams and have not eaten anything (that I know of anyway) that could have caused a flare. Thus in my mind, the natural progression of TSW is the most likely cause for this flare. This is disappointing for me on two fronts: 1. A flare is always disappointing. 2. I had thought that I’d have some form of control over TSW but what this shows is that I don’t really.

In saying this, I’m not 100% certain that some food could not have been the cause of this. All I know is that I’ve not changed my diet in any substantial manner such that I can attribute the symptoms of a flare to food. Despite this, I still believe that food has a large effect on your body and thus your skin.

Skin update:

The folds of my arms and my face are the most affected. The folds of my arms have been the worst since starting. In fact I’d venture further to say that it’s worse than it was when I had my initial flare. The elephant skin area has spread and covers an area greater than just the folds of my arms itself. It’s also become a lot itchier and red as a result.

My face has also flared up considerably. First and foremost, it has swelled such that my eyes are noticeably smaller than normal (as if I didn’t have small enough eyes to begin with? haha). Shedding and oozing have also increased substantially all over; even my left earlobe is affected. Even my forehead, which was previously getting smooth, has started back up again. A thing of note here is that I realised that the skin that sheds during a flare and the skin that sheds when not in a flare is of a different colour. When I’m going through a flare, the skin that sheds takes a more yellow colour. This I attribute down to the ooze that is also coming out. In contrast, the skin that sheds when not in a flare is just plain white. For me, this is one of the signs of an oncoming flare.

For those visually inclined, I’ve got some goodies at the bottom of the post just for you :E

The other parts of my body are not as badly affected. My armpits, frontal chest and stomach area, and fingers are slightly more irritated than normal but nothing to really cause alarm about. One of the positives I can take refuge in I guess.

For those who may be wondering how I distinguish what I’m currently going through now and other mini-flares which I’ve talked about, for me the difference lies in the ooze and swelling. My face feels as though it’s back to what I initially went through and the itching has definitely upped the ante on certain parts. Whereas in a mini-flare, the swelling and oozing has never reached this level which made me feel as though they were much more manageable than my current condition. It might be a thin line in the sand but it’s a line all the same.

#Rant

In general I’m just really disappointed and letdown by this whole process now. Looking back, I’ve come so far from what I was initially going through in my initial flare that I could only see an uphill slope. This flare just destroys any such thoughts in its entirety. I mean how much more do I have to go through of this? If not for this process I really felt that I could have done so much more during the past 9 months. I could have had worked better at university. I could have had made more new friends and socialised more. I could have had the confidence to walk into anywhere and not immediately feel embarrassed for my current condition. As it already stands, the onset of TSW meant that I had to miss out of half of my internship at a good firm. In doing so, I felt that I had betrayed the trust of the partner who had hired me and was consequently not able to show the full capacity of what I am capable of. I realise that it’s not entirely my fault and that health should always come first however I still can’t help but feel that it was such a wasted opportunity.

The disappointment also stems from the fact that I feel as though i don’t have control of this recovery process. As mentioned above, I strongly believed that so long as I abstained from any creams or foods that were flare-inducing, I wouldn’t fall into a second flare. This experience clearly tells me that I was wrong. Therefore I’m not too sure what to think. I’d very much like to think that I still have some control over this process however would that be too arrogant a thought after being shown that I clearly don’t?

As for my faith, I feel as though i’ve personally been let down. Not sure if I can elaborate more on this without needing a full post (which I don’t have the intention of doing) so I guess I’ll leave it at that.

Sigh. Don’t know how much more of being beat down and still try to live life as per normal.

#Rant over

So POSITIVES:

– I still have a strong support unit in my family who cater to my whims and fancies during this time.
– University is not scheduled to start until another 9 days. Hopefully by that time, the flare will have eased up significantly so as to let me go back with some level of confidence about how I look.
– This flare is not as bad as the initial flare in that the worst affected places are limited to the folds of my arms and face. Very thankful that the armpits are not affected as that was one experience I do not want to go through again.
– I know I have friends that don’t care how I look and are willing to spend time with me regardless of how red or destroyed my face may look.
– Right now, I’m in the thick of winter. This definitely beats experiencing oozing in the summer as I find that the skin generally drys up faster than if it is moist and sweaty.
– I know what to expect with a flare having gone through it once at the beginning. I’m not traversing into the dark unknown.

There we have it. Just needed to get that out of my system. Sorry if that was not a great/fun read by any means. I personally don’t like to read other people’s posts if it is really negative as that only makes me feel worse. But I did need to let the steam off somewhere and this turned out to a good way of doing so whilst documenting my progress through TSW.

Hopefully I’ll have something more positive to write come the end of the month. Wishing everyone out there the the best in your recovery.

 

End of Month 7!

Whoa I can’t believe that I’ve reached the end of month 7 so fast. I think that this month has been especially fast due to the trip overseas and my exams. These two things have been keeping me pre-occupied which must have made the time go by faster. Love it. Soon it’ll be one year. Yesh!

So by way of a skin update:

For those who have been keeping up with my posts, you’ll have read that I experienced a mini flare over in Singapore which resulted in a flakier and redder face. One which was more susceptible to ooze outbreaks as I could feel the skin give way. The odd thing is that immediately after having reached home (winter in New Zealand at the moment), my face has been the best since stopping steroids. Most of the time, it’s only a little flaky and dry; there are some parts which feel like my normal skin. The forehead has seen the most improvement in really feeling like normal skin and very very minimal flaking. I only realise it now but because of that, I’ve been rubbing my face a lot more often these past two weeks just because 1. the skin feels semi-normal and 2. it feels great to rub normal skin and 3. because I can haha. If I had done the same some 3 weeks ago,  it would almost definitely have caused some ooze to come out.

I’m not exactly sure what would have caused the noticeable improvement. It felt like it just turned over a new leaf within 2-3 days of touching down in NZ. I’d like to think that the winter dryness has helped as I feel my skin generally fares better in the cold. And secondly, I did have a few bouts of traditional chinese medicine cooked by my grandma in Singapore so maybe that would have done some good? Regardless my confidence has gone up as I look and feel more normal. So thankful for this improvement.

My body is also feeling slightly better. This would include my chest, armpits, stomach and neck areas. Such things are hard to quantify but I can say with a good level of certainty that it is smoother to the touch. Just slightly. It still itches a bit after the shower and is still rough. However in general, it feels like it has less spots on it and is improving. The same statements can be made about my neck which is also feeling slightly smoother. Might chuck up a few photos later this month along with some older photos for comparison.

Problem spots still remaining:

– Face. As above, my face is still red and flaky albeit a lot less than before.

– Behind the elbows (is there a proper name for this? haha). This part still itches and is red. Having said that it was an original eczema spot so I can’t say that this is unexpected.

– Body. Refer to above.

– Scalp. This is also another part which has seen improvement. There are less flakes dropping off now and it is less itchy. Sometimes I find myself scratching it only to realise that it’s actually not itchy but painful to scratch. The black tshirts are starting to slowly come out of the wardrobe now haha.

– Hair. Another part that’s improving albeit not fully there yet. Hair still falls out in the shower however much less than before and there are now no bald spots as when it first started falling out.

Areas which are now clear:

– Behind the knees. These used to be affected even when I had normal eczema however are now completely clear. Pigmentation is the only issue but I can live with that.

– Fingers. Again they were really bad at the start of TSW but are now almost very normal. They’re normal enough that no one will take a second look. However it still itches from time to time.

– Upper thighs. I don’t remember mentioning this on the blog but when I first started out TSW, they became dry and slightly irritated despite not having applied steroid creams on there at all. They’ve been good for a long while now and continue to be so.

Goal!

Yes the soccer world cup is on at the moment but that’s not what I’m referring to. Instead I’ve found that I’ve been able to manage pretty hot showers for the last couple of weeks! Given the increasing wintery cold, the feeling of having a really hot shower after a long uni day is just…oh so good. During the period of applying steroids, this would not have been achievable as upon exiting the shower, I would immediately break out into a scratching fit. But now, there are no itching fits after coming out of a hot shower! It’s a good day when I can tick off one of my TSW goals that was made a while back.

Supplements/Food

This is something that’s been on my mind for a while now and I was considering posting it up as a separate post but since I’m at it now, might as well lump it into this post =)

So from reading other people’s blogs and posts on the ITSAN forum, I’ve read about TSW warriors who have given up on eating supplements and/or healthy food due to the lack of noticeable improvements. Instead they’ve reverted to eating whatever they want. I assume this to include foods high in sugar and processed foods.

However I would like to implore them to continue eating healthily (let me clarify by saying that when I talk about eating healthily, I’m referring to a balanced diet and an attempt to stay away from processed and refined foods.)

If you consider your body as a machine; the input is going to determine the output. If you put in garbage, it will be reflected in the output. Likewise if you put in nutritious items, there should be a positive outcome. Thus the phrase ‘you are what you eat.’ There is real undisputed truth in this statement.

Now I don’t mean to disregard people’s posts about how their skin didn’t improve despite eating supplements and healthy food. To a certain extent I’ve been eating much healthier than I was pre-TSW but am yet to be attribute improvements in my skin due to my diet. So please understand that I am not disputing people’s anecdotes about how food did not work for them.

Having said that, I can’t help but still come back to the statement ‘you are what you eat.’ I sincerely believe that if you eat healthily, it will have an effect on your body. Whether or not it has a noticeable effect on your body is subject to many factors; one of which is the fact that our skin is itself trying to recover from the damage caused by steroids. Thus despite the lack of improvements in skin, I have no doubt that it will still have a positive effect on your body and skin, even if it may be in the long run. EVEN if there are no noticeable improvements in the skin within the short-medium term, it still can’t hurt to eat a healthy/balanced diet as it will still have positive implications for your body in general. Better health will usually equal healthy skin. So yes you might have to stay away from certain comfort foods and the like but I would say that the benefits outweigh the costs.

The same applies to supplements. I’ve been taking a combination of fish oil, probiotics, vitamin C and a silica tablet on a daily basis for 3-4 months by now. I don’t continue to take them because of any visible benefits (my skin has improved over that period but I’m not able to say that the improvements are due to the supplements) but I know that in the long-run they will still positively affect my health in general. Yes it may be costly but it’s only for a period of time.

TLDR – even if there is no direct improvement in your skin condition from taking supplements and eating healthily, it will still have a positive effect on your body in general and there will be a flow-on effect on your skin in the long run.

That’s just my opinion though and everyone’s situation is different with TSW. However for those who have stopped supplements or reverted back to an unhealthy diet, I hope you would re-consider the costs against the benefits of doing so.

That’s all for now. Hope everyone’ s well!

Winter is Coming

So as promised, I’m writing up a post here to document what happened after my short trip to Singapore. Excuse the title – I couldn’t think of anything else since it is that cold here now in Auckland. Given that I just came back from hot Singapore, the cold probably felt twice as cold for me (that doesn’t sound like it made sense but anyway).

Generally I was a little worse in Singapore than I was back home. My face flared a little and I could feel the ooze sitting below the skin such that if I were to scratch hard, it would start oozing. Funnily enough my left earlobe started going back to what it was like in months 3-4 which meant I had to take certain positions to minimise the ooze coming out at night. I think I can safely put this mini flare down to two main causes

1. I caught a cold in the plane on the way to SG. In my wisdom I decided to dress for the heat even whilst leaving Auckland. This meant that I was left vulnerable to the cold air during the 10 hour flight (why are planes always so cold?). To be fair I almost made it all the way without catching a cold; sadly it decided to sneak up on me during the last 1-2 hours.

I’ve noticed that whenever I’m not feeling well (e.g. a cold), my skin would likewise flare a little bit. This makes sense to me because if your body is trying to fight off the other illness, then less resources could be spent trying to heal the skin. Thus the skin is affected albeit to a small extent.

2. The heat. This is largely self explanatory and most TSW warriors would probably agree with me on this. That whenever your body gets hot or sweaty, it starts to have an itch attack. I was largely fine during the day in Singapore (probably because I tried to be in an air-conditioned place all the time haha) but when after a shower at night, I would almost always experience an itch attack. I get a similar kind of reaction here after a shower too but I felt that it was just that much worse in the heat of SG.

So there you have it. Just a short post today about what happened over the past 7 days. A good thing that came out of this trip was the confirmation that I’m actually okay with most, if not all, foods. Over the past week, I ate some kind of seafood over 4/5 out of the 7 days and had no ill after-effects. This was assuring for me because pre-TSW I had had no issues with food at all. Those issues only started sometime after the application of TS. Hopefully this is another sign that I’m inching one step closer to full healing.

Another thing to mention is that I’m a little bit skeptical now towards trying out Paleo over the next month until uni starts again. Reason being that I started to get constipation a few days before leaving for Singapore which lasted for a week (remember that I tried doing Paleo for the 2 weeks before I left for Singapore. That didn’t really stop me from eating all the food I enjoyed even though I felt bloated every night. Sigh the things I do for food haha.

I’m quite sure that it is due to the change in diet as there were no other factors during that period that I can attribute the constipation to. So yes I recognise that the Paleo diet would cut out inflammatory foods and thus theoretically would quicken healing but I’m not sure about the side effects and whether they might negate the benefits of Paleo. I mean constipation would result in more toxins left in your body as it’s not being purged out. Not to mention the feeling of the bloated stomach at night ugh.

So the decision about doing Paleo for the next month is on hold for the moment until I can do more research on it. In saying that I still intend on eating as healthily as possible. For me, this entails not eating processed foods, staying away from MSG high foods and eating more leafy greens and meat.

That’s all for now. Time to go lose some weight and find hangers and space for the new clothes =). Hope everyone out there is doing better each day.