Tuesday, 27 December 2011

Day 37 (photo)

When it comes to Topical Steroid rebound symptoms, the phrase "One step forward, two steps back" comes to mind. My skin was realy improving recently, but the last two nights, I have woken up in the early hours of the morning in an itching and scratching frenzy. When you scratch in your sleep you don't really know what you are doing until you wake up and your skin is in shreds. I decided to post a photo to show the damage:
So you can see that the actual skin on my arm was getting whiter and calming down, but my nails have managed to gouge a lot of the skin off, leaving scabby areas which will take time to heal. There is probably some scientific explanation for why we itch, as I do think it has something to do with skin healing, but scratching can do a huge amount of damage. The backs of my legs are suffering pretty badly too and I also keep scratching my chin, so wake up with lots of blood all over my chin.

On the up-side, my skin is less tight and I can move my arms and neck a lot better. I am going to try some techniques to stop scratching, such as tying some pillowcases around my hands to see if that will help. I tried cotton gloves before, but just pulled them off in my sleep.

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