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!