Allopath...

A great little video, credit to Corinna Lee from one of the great TSW Facebook groups I'm a member of.
Sums up the medical community brilliantly I feel!

Flaring....?

I think I may be flaring...
Lots itchier than normal, skin is really dry again and sore to touch, a few lint wounds and a bit of oozing too. not fun :(

I hate flaring for a few reasons..
1) It makes me wonder if the ciclo is even working, and if isn't then i'm putting my body at risk of other things such as skin cancer and liver disease/kidney problems for no reason.
2) If the ciclo is working and these are just mini flares that are being dampened by ciclo...how much would I be sufferng if I weren't on ciclo?! and how badly will I suffer when I have to reduce and eventually stop ciclo? I actually skipped a dose by mistake a few days ago so maybe this is the result, but i thought it took a while for the ciclo to actually affect the system so I'm not sure.
3) I still have that classic eczema mentality that somehow a flare or bad skin is my fault. "If i could just keep my nails short", "If i could just stop scratching" etc etc etc. For so many years doctors have drummed it into me "YOU MUST NOT SCRATCH" that in my head scratching is the problem. In my head I don't actually even HAVE an underlying problem i just need to STOP SCRATCHING. This was the best thing about starting TSW for me, I started to realise that there are some things that are out of control, my skin will flare and break just the same if I scratch or if i dont - within reason! obviously scratching can damage the skin and slow down healing but whether I scratch or not I still have tsw, it's out of my control. That's a really liberating feeling

Anyway hopefully this will pass. I have a derm appointment on 1st June and I'm terrified he will want to reduce my ciclo :( I'm enjoying having quite good skin and I don't want that to change before my holiday on 1st July!!

Hope everyone is well
S x

"Hypochondriac"

Ok so just checked the post and I have a letter from yesterday that was a copy of one my derm has sent to my gp. Now, luckily I'm the sort of person who laughs about things rather than cries about them as this is one of the sentences in the letter:

"Sarah has severe atopic chronic eczema that requires the use of steroids, possibly indefinitely. However Sarah refuses to admit this and wil not use steroids. Sarah actively refuses treatment which leads me to believe there may be some form of hypochondria involved"

HA! I'm literally all out of words. Sometimes I think my derm just likes to be a dick on purpose 😡

Anyway, I'm off to enjoy what's left of my weekend, hope you all do the same

S x