NEW YEAR: An update and overview of my TSW

It's been nearly 7 years since I began this journey to rid my skin's addiction to topical steroids. My current state is manageable but not cured and highly dependent on season (winter is especially bad with heaters and such). There is eczema on half of my fingers as well as my neck and lower face. I sometimes wonder if the length of the process is because in April 2016, my strength and resolve wavered and I went on a 2 week course of topical steroids and antibiotics on the advice of a dermatologist. Though the skin predictably cleared up perfectly after this course, it returned to a flaring state right after to my chagrin and non-surprise. Through that experience, my resolve has strengthened and I've since been determined to allow my body to heal through time.

What is my skin currently like? It's dry and flaky and my fingers have cracks, but what I'm grateful to not have is red inflamed skin. I attribute this first to time, but also to my routine which includes:

• dead sea salt baths every 3ish days, which I have detailed here.
• no moisturizing which calms and dries down the skin, the process of which I detailed starting here.

Some notable changes to the above is that first, my skin is strong enough to allow me to rub flakes off during and after my dead sea salt bath; in fact, I'm now quite aggressive with scruffing off a layer of skin now. I'm also using a different shampoo -- Nioxin Scalp Recovery -- which is slightly more cost effective and slightly more gentle on the skin, though not perfect since they changed their formula.

I still get incredibly itchy later in the evening but I allow myself the glory of scratching because my skin is resilient enough to take it. 

I certainly do feel like my skin has been resolving itself under those flakes, because it almost feels like zone by zone, the flares are slowly resulting in cured skin underneath, albeit at a snail's pace. For example it took over half a year for the tops of my feet to heal, and my fingers' eczema seems to have persisted for several months now but moved from finger to finger. 

All in all, I'm disappointed that things have taken this long to heal but looking at the calendar, I can imagine that I probably had a major set back using the course of topical steroids in April of 2016. I can only hope that by staying the course now I'm close to healed. For now, the salt baths will have to do. 

I will also do a course of Whole30 AIP and see how it impacts my skin as I've been eating terribly (lots of bread and desserts) and I think that definitely adds some inflammation to my system. Fingers crossed conditions improve! 

PAIN: Flare has no end in sight

Well this is unfortunate. I was so sure that my hell was over but it has returned to haunt me. Currently, my face, neck, shoulders, upper back, upper chest and arms are all flaring. No oozing but painful red dry flaky swollen skin is all over.

I had forgotten the pain that comes with topical steroid withdrawal and currently my dead sea salt baths are very rare (1-2 per week) and yet each one stings worse than the last. I'm still not moisturizing as the one time I did, my face turned into a desert quite rapidly with thick itchy flakes.

My sleep is now quite disturbed again and I resort to pain killers and benadryl to catch maintain my sleep schedule.

I even had to revive my topical steroid withdrawal wardrobe to cover my skin from even stagnant air. Unfortunately less and less companies are making fine cotton spandex  clothing so I'm constantly on the hunt for some more soft pieces of clothes.

Life day to day feels difficult again. My shoulders hunch from pain and my movement is limited. Most frustrating since I had just revived my workout routine and must put it on hold again. Those desperate and sad feelings are back periodically though most of the time I still trust the process despite the pain and discomfort.

I hope everyone out there is healing and I'd love to hear about those of you that have healed. I can't wait to join u guys soon.

SURPRISE: I'm flaring again

Well,  I thought it was over but the end of February has been killer. My upper chest, upper back, arms, neck and face have been flaring the worst I've experienced in a year. I've been revisited with hyper shedding skin and the pain. Oh the pain.

I feel like I'm slightly less panicked and more able to cope with the symptoms now: pain killers for pain, lint rollers and constant wiping dead skin cells away, no showers baths or lotion for as long as I can take it, and a constant reminder to myself that this is just a temporary set back.

The following pictures were taken 2/25 after a bath. I started flaring maybe a week and a half before that. Today, I'm still in about the same state but I've avoided bathing so my skin feels marginally thicker.

This flare makes me think of the "first in last out" model of healing. I definitely started in my upper torso to face region so hopefully this is a sign of the topical steroid withdrawal burning out where it started. In any case, I look forward to being rid of this flare soon!

Stay dry, 

Megan 

RENEWED: 99.999999999% healed!

I'm renewed in the year 2016! After a long journey since May 2013, I can finally say my topical steroid withdrawal journey is behind me!

Not only is my skin no longer a daily issue, but I can do my nails, diet, exercise, use products, pretty much without considering the repercussions.

Since my last post, I have:

• grown nails
• started a diet/exercise routine
• worn lotion on occasion
• worn makeup 
• gone on dates
• switched jobs
• lost 10 lbs
• accepted myself with good or bad skin 

I can't believe how far I've come, looking back at even just the most recent post (6 months ago). And I'm really happy to be where I am, and look at the new year with optimism for a new beginning. In my 30th year, I'm feeling energized to pursue all the things I never did before TSW and I'm pretty grateful that I went through this because it has truly been transformative both inside and out.

I want to thank all the TSW bloggers for their support and suggestions, especially Dan for urging me to go moisturizer free and trying dead sea salt baths. They were truly the ticket when it came to improving my quality of life as my skin layers restored.

My current routine is still very much similar to the one covered here: http://steroidfreeskin.blogspot.com/2014/04/update-dead-sea-salt-baths-for-dry-skin.html

Here is my current skin routine:

• I take a dead sea salt bath every 3ish days, and shampoo with any shampoo. My skin is strong enough for me to rub off flakes now, even on my fingers pictured below.
• My face doesn't need moisturizer.
• I wear eye/eyebrow makeup but rarely use foundation. I remove eye makeup with witch hazel.
• I use Jergen's bronzing glow on my legs when I want them to look nice, as there's still residual flakes, but typically this is every 3-4 days.

As my skin got better, I just realized I was living life again and thus became terrible at updating my blog, but I wanted to let you all out there know where I stand, in case you also need hope that the end of TSW is around the corner, so close you won't even realize it when you're there! Happy new year to all, and stay dry!

Megan

ANNIVERSARY: a flare to begin another year of topical steroid withdrawal

My two year came and went this May and things have been calm. I'm slowly transitioning out of wearing leggings 24/7 and reintroducing non-cotton clothing back into my life. 

My routine has been taking showers (no soap) 2-3 times per week and NO LOTION! And my skin looks normal, albeit a little on the dry side. The last two pictures are my hands with NO LOTION at all. Note how my unaffected skin doesn't look ashy or dry. 

My skin is pretty much all healed except for my left hand, right ring finger and bottom half of my face. The facial skin looks pretty normal but does shed more than the rest of my skin and gets flakes once in a while on the cheeks and chin and upper lip areas. My hands look like typical eczema and just kind of persists with very slow improvement. 

Until............

Last week, the skin on my fingers just started disintegrating. It felt spongy and was easy to rip off and started oozing liquid. After the first few days, I resumed Dead Sea salt baths and it seemed to help seal over the wounds (see Friday's picture below). This again has shown me the power of dead sea salt baths as I had tried coating my fingers with antibiotic, Penaten, anything that would make a dent. It wasn't until I used the dead sea salt baths that my skin began to stop oozing and turn around.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: This is the link to my dead sea salt routine.

Sunday, 6/14/15

Tuesday, 6/16/15

Friday, 6/19/15

Tuesday, 6/23/15

So flares do still happen, just not the devastating ones of yesteryear. I will continue taking dead sea salt baths for the time being but as you can see the skin on the fingers has healed over and very manageable. 

I still can't emphasize enough how much not using moisturizer and taking these baths has impacted my journey. Moisturizer draws out the ooze more, I believe, and keeps the skin in a fragile state. I definitely noticed it this time around, when I was trying to "protect" my skin by using antibiotic creams. The ooze would just break through and keep the area inflamed. Staying dry really forces the skin to stand up for itself, build up its layers and return to normal. 

Until next time, stay dry! 

CHAPPED: A brief respite, and a flare.

Well, it was good while it lasted... Month 21!

Between mid December and mid January, I was doing well, skin-wise.

So well, in fact, that I may have gone a little overboard. I started wearing makeup and moisturizing my face. My skin felt smooth, but perhaps was still a bit weak. Well, I may have jumped the gun on that one b/c a flare began the last week of January and has still not subsided.

At least there's no terrible itch or lack of sleep. It's just really peely skin on a few of my eczematic spots of my hands even with slight ooze on one finger and my lips, OH my lips. They have just been terribly chapped for the past few weeks. They would heal perhaps for a day or two then go back to being super chapped again. I'm getting close to a chap cycle and hoping it will subside after this.

How am I handling this? I'm back to my dead sea salt bath every 2-3 days as needed (It feels SO GOOD). And NO MOISTURIZER. I think this was my mistake in jumping the gun on my facial skin before it was ready. The thing is, my forehead is just fine, as it was not an area affected by TSW. But the TSW affected areas (cheeks, chin, lips and upper lip) are really not happy with me and are super flaky. At least I'm not panicking and I just have to continue to remind myself not to get too excited the next time I get a turn around. 

I'm fairly certain this flare/setback is a result of me moisturizing too early. Why? My legs and feet are just fine. I moisturized very minimally in these areas whereas my hands/face where I got overzealous in moisturizing are really punishing me right now. 

Here are the pix. 

3rd finger is so unhappy! There's a bit of ooze coming out of the cracked upper knuckle.


Right hand has always been ahead in healing, but still shows a sign of a flare on the ring finger, it was oozing 2 days ago but I've been keeping it taped up for the most part so it's healing nicely.


Woe is me. The entire outline of my lips is a mess. With cracks and thick skin, it's hard to even eat a large bite! It looks like I got a lip job from far away. HAH. My jawline has tender flaking skin which shows pink very easily, as is the case with my cheeks. You can probably tell I was just scratching my cheek, with that tell tale piece of white showing through. My upper lip skin has just begun to heal from being cracked all week.

Moral of the story? Don't moisturize before the skin is 100% healed, if at all!

Happy healing and stay dry!

UPDATE: Healing from Topical Steroid Addiction

It's been almost a year and a half since I began this journey. A year ago, the worst was still yet to come and on the other side of that experience, I can only feel grateful that it's (mostly) behind me. 

My skin is now manageable in the sense that there are no devastating itch, ooze or flare attacks, just small cracks here and there due to heavy use during chores. 

What's my current routine? 

I'm still not using moisturizer and taking dead sea salt baths as detailed in this post. I'm up to 4 days between baths, washing my hair when I get a little grimy. Still using taping for broken skin management as detailed here.

The difference now is that I could take a shower if I wanted to but my skin will be a little on the dry side. As for moisturizer, whereas previous lotion use would result in red inflamed skin, I can now apply it without incident. I'm still keeping it to a minimum so as to let my skin's oil content recover itself. 

Speaking of oil content, I'm also breaking out again! Yes that is excitement since it means my skin is oily enough to trap dirt and grime again. 

All in all, everything is progressing slowly but nicely. Here are some progress pictures. 

Feet still have remnants of damaged skin but have not flared since last reported. 

Upper lip cracks are pretty persistent, but slow progress is visible. Jawline still has flakes sticking too it, which I can scratch off without breaking my skin!

Finger cracks are finer and skin is still poofy  around knuckles. Perhaps plenty of white blood cells are there doing their job?