Eczema Flare Up

Back when I was in my late teens, my GP told me that I should have grown out of my eczema by then. I'm now in my mid thirties and eczema is one of the many things that I have yet to grow out of.

What I have found is that when you tell someone you have eczema, they imagine that you have a little patch of red skin on the back of your leg or maybe on your elbow. Most of the time, that is the case, which is why I say that I have mild eczema (my uncle has extreme eczema where he's even managed to get it behind his eyeballs).

This common assumption that eczema is primarily a patch of red tucked away somewhere hides a nasty truth that many people live with all their lives. For me, I have had to live with a slightly more severe form for the last few days.

I've always had some on the back of my neck or behind my knees but recently, it has spread like wildfire and it is all over me like the proverbial rash. Apart from gallons of hydrocortisone, I don't know what to do. So far, these are the steps I've found that I can do;

• Drink lots of water so that if there's a toxin in my system that has caused this, it'll wash out
• Drink less cows' milk and more goats' milk
• Moisturise with unscented moisturiser
• Stay calm (yeah, right)
• Stay cool (temperature, not style)
  
• Don't scratch
  

I'm trying the above, but it's particularly hard to moisturise when the rash has spread over my entire torso (front and back), my arms and legs and neck and face. It's almost impossible to not scratch and while I am drinking goats' milk, it's not as nice as that of the cow. As for staying calm and cool, it's a struggle but I'm trying.

But that last one is the corker because whenever someone tells me "don't scratch", I just want to smack them in the face with a flaky fist because if there's anything an eczema sufferer knows he shouldn't do, it's scratching but if there's one thing that an eczema suffere can't stop doing, it's scratching.

It's not funny and it's more than a hindrance.

It can stop you from walking, from being able to concentrate or from being comfortable in a social situation yet there's no scope for me to take sick leave because of eczema because eczema is perceived as merely a deficient appearance, but I promise you, when you got eczema, your appearance isn't always at the top of your list of concerns.

Sometimes, all you want is peace and you ain't got it because every square inch of your body is crying out for attention, screaming for you to scratch or rub or stroke and all you can do is wish that one night, just one night, you could sleep right through until morning without waking up every hour finding yourself scratching the living daylight out of yourself.