Bad Weather Blues Part 2

Still snowing.....

My garden looks like this...

....my neck looks like this.....

....and my face looks like this.

For some reason, the area between my nose and top lip is particularly bad today. Yesterday, that area was wet and oozy and it looked like I hadn't wiped my nose! Yuk! Today is even worse because the ooze has dried and it looks like I have a bogey under my nose.

If you look at the picture of my neck, you can see rips in my skin. I think this is where the skin has actually split and ripped because of the tightness, so when I bend my neck, the skin tears. And yes, it hurts as bad as it looks.

I slept really well last night, strangely enough, although |I woke up around 4:00 a.m. to a soaking wet neck. In the morning, the air dries the ooze and tightens the skin to a taught, papery layer. This is why it is SO important to have some sort of moisturiser by the bed. When I wake up, I prop myself up and slowly cream up the bits that won't move! I call it "unsticking myself". It's the reason that I hate mornings.

Being a snowy day, I would have loved the chance to stay inside all cosy, but the rotten school has decided to open today and hold a "Science Day" for the parents, which means I have to go out looking like this. Maybe I should be an exhibit for Science Day and have my own little table about the dangers of cortisone...

On a brighter note, you will notice that my facial skin on my cheeks is white! White! Its nice to see a lack of colour in my cheeks for a change! I still think the perioral (fancy word for round the mouth) dermatitis is worse that other areas because of using the inhaler for so many years. I'm so glad to be off it now.

I'm wondering how long this flare will last. Hopefully it will be short and sharp. It is rare for a flare to last more than a week, so I'm hoping things will change soon. For the record, the rest of me is fine. My neck and mouth area are the last strongholds of the TSW rash, so please don't go thinking "Oh my days! This woman is 16 months off the steroids and still looks like a bag of scabs!", because actually, the rest of me is normal skin. I'm just miffed because I know that some people are healed by 16 months. But hey, if I have to play a little extra time, there's not much I can do about it.