VIRAL: My skin caught a cold, then gave it to me. I live to tell the tale. And share pictures.

It's been 13 months!!! I didn't post a year post because I was just so frustrated that I was still going through this. And tbh, I still am. I was feeling pretty positive about the path to healing with my dead sea salt bath/no moisturizer routine. Until this happened:

So end of April, my feet caught a cold. What I mean is there was definitely something viral going on. You can see those patterned blister type things especially on 4/30. My skin started to lose its integrity then exploded in tiny pustules and eventually just ooze. 

Then I got sick. The first week of May, I caught a nasty cold and was out of work for a week. Slight chill/fever, runny nose and congestion. I thought to myself, thanks feet. Assholes. (Note: I'm fully aware my feet didn't give me their cold virus. Most likely, my immune system was just weakened from fighting the open skin infections that I was more susceptible to something)

5/16/2014 rolls by which is my one year anniversary of dealing with this shiz and I'm just miserable. Didn't feel like blogging about it and so onward ho I went. 

At this point, most of the foot was scabbing over but ooze was still seeping out of the seams. To deal with this, I went back to my trusty Nexcare paper tape and literally taped my skin together. 24 hours later, old scabs peel off with the skin and delicate new skin appears. Ideally, I'd keep it on as long as possible though with my (nonexistent) will power, I managed a whole day and a half and that gave the best results I'd seen. 

Tape to hold my skin together? check.

During this time, I had to travel to a bachelor party and then a wedding and let me tell you this shiz saved my life because my feet were still oozing without the help of the tape seconding for my skin. 

My feet didn't heal up completely until 6/8 where you can see the skin is finally covering everything and HOLDING THE LIQUID IN. Holy crap, I could wear socks again without worrying about the liquid immediately drawing out of my feet. Fan-freaking-tastic. 

Below are the pictures which show the progression. And let me tell you, thank goodness I took them. Had I not, my head would have probably been exploding by mid May when it felt like nothing had changed, though through the pictures you definitely could see a difference. 

4/27

4/28

4/29

4/29

4/30

5/1

5/2

5/3

5/5

5/8

5/9

5/13

5/21

6/8

And here we are today. My feet are holding liquid in, though surprise, surprise, the skin is not healed. It is just dry and flaky. 

Continuing problematic areas:

Left hand is good... till you get to the fingers!
Right hand is A-OK, just a tiny blemish on index knuckle

My left hand has continued to have elephant skin on the 3 outermost fingers with constant cracks forming at the knuckles, though my right hand is OK. 

My lips are insanely chapped and I've resorted to dropping fish oil on them when I get desperate, but for the most part I let them remain dry. Definitely avoiding petroleum jelly because when I have used it, my skin immediately weakens and gets even more insanely chapped and cracked. Yup, red and bold because it's that serious.

On the bright side! 

My torso, and arms are great. Just a touch of dryness but I can wear T-shirts and look "normal". I donated all my thumb shirts! Exchanged them for cotton/spandex V neck t shirts.

My legs are just quite little flaky but no real afflicted areas.

Itch and sleep are a non issue now. 

Besides my foot fiasco, my skin isn't really the center of my life. I'm still not back to my normal routine but I can hang out, drink, eat without worrying about having itch attacks etc. So life is decent, just gotta keep chugging along.