Eczema & All It's Glory: Inflammation; My Recent Flare Up

For me, the hardest part of dealing with Eczema is the unpredictable behavior of your flare-ups. Flare-ups are when your skin suddenly forms intense inflammation and itching. Skin can break out in numerous ways so flare-ups usually consists of rashes, hives, scrapes, scratches, blisters, flakiness and a whole lot of redness. If the flare-up is severe, it may also secrete a smelly fluid that dries a light brown color and crusts up in the crooks of your skin. Flare-ups can last as short as a few days to as long as a couple of months, there's really no indication that I've experienced myself to judge how long you'll have your flare-up when it happens. The photos below are from my most recent flare-up that happened almost two weeks ago. There was also redness that was around my eyes, mouth and neck area that isn't pictured. These areas are always problematic for me and I almost never break out on any other body part. Before this, my skin was maintained at my "normal" for about three weeks which means: no redness and only slight flakiness here and there when my moisturizer absorbs. I wouldn't say it was at it's absolute best but I think it was steady. Of course the cause of this is unknown so I've been quite frustrated on my okay skin streak being over.

It was dry but not as dry as I know my skin could get so it was the appearance that was my main concern. It was a strong, neon pink that I've never had before so I was startled at the fact that it was like day and night compared to how it looked the night before. During flare-ups, simple everyday tasks that require movement get a lot more difficult. Since my eye area tends to breakout, it'll affect the way I feel when I wake up regardless of how long I sleep. My eyeballs itself will feel dry and my eyelids actually have a hard time opening. For the first few minutes, there'll be a burning sensation that I have to "tear my way through" in order to comfortably keep my eyes open. In combination to this sort of groggy-ness feeling due to my eyes, stretching and doing anything that requires moving my arms will cause stinging in my shoulders, neck and chest. The skin gets so thin and tender that you have to restrain yourself from doing much and hope that sleeping it off will make you feel better. By far the hardest thing to do will be taking a shower because when you have such a large surface area of your skin being raw and open, showers are what I like to be called- acid baths. Thankfully, the stinging and burning goes away after a couple of minutes but to muster up the courage to let that water hit your skin is still something I fear and struggle with whenever I break out. Fortunately, this break out in particular hasn't been the worst I've experienced and didn't leave my skin open so cold showers have been bearable. After leathering myself with moisturizer every four hours, the inflammation seemed to go down nicely. Three days later, this is what my skin looks like:

It's been about a week and a half since my flare up started in total and I've pretty much remained this way ever since....today.

Today is a bad day and I'm basically the same intensity of redness I was initially. Again, this just goes to show how much of a roller coaster ride it is to try and manage your skin when you have this condition. Although your skin may look like it's improving, there's always a chance that your peace won't be long-lived.
After doing some research, I came across something called Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW) or Red Skin Syndrome (RSS). This happens when you've been treating your skin with steroids for a long period of time and then all of a sudden stop which results in an adverse reaction. I've been a topical steroid user for about nine years and officially stopped about a month ago. I suspect that I may be going through this withdrawal currently so once I'm able to educate myself a little more and confirm, I'll write a separate post to share the details. Since my skin is still heavily inflamed, I haven't been motivated to do much and have been glued to my bed all day so this will conclude the basics of what it's like for me during a flare-up. Next week, I'll share a couple products that have been helping me get through this with a little bit more comfort. - AC