Be Careful What You Wish For

It seems that I may have been neglecting my blog as of late. Shame on me! To be fair, though, an insomniac who can no longer have the benefit of caffeine must preserve what little energy she has for work and home. I have wanted to blog several times in the last week or so. Unfortunately, by the time I got finished with my obligations, there was simply nothing left.

So, with my excuses out of the way, let’s get down to it. I have tons to say, but for this post, we’re going to discuss my dyshidrotic eczema a bit. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.” Yeah…let me tell you about getting wishes when you have dyshidrosis.

My Old Wish

When my hands were basically nothing but blisters, I wished for the drying phase. I yearned for it, hoped for it, and prayed for it. Anything had to be better than the incessant itching and weeping. The few places that had cycled to the dry phase seemed to peel away and heal. I wanted that for my entire hands. If it would just dry up, then maybe it would heal.

Ha. Ha. Ha. The joke is on me, lemme tell ya! As of right now, my hands have pretty much cycled through the blistering phase. I have a few straggly blisters here and there, but for the most part, I am drying and peeling. And, while I am THRILLED not to be oozing everywhere I go, this dry phase is not the walk in the park I thought it would be.

Soaks are no longer beneficial, it seems. There is not enough moisturizer in the world to restore moisture in this skin. Oh, you can slather it on good every couple of hours or so, and it will absorb. Where it goes after it absorbs is beyond me, because it certainly does not stay in the skin. What’s the problem with that?

Well, dry skin is itchy skin. I look like I’m undergoing some strange metamorphosis into a reptile with all of the peeling and flaking. I spend a minimum of two hours per day carefully clipping away dead skin that has dried and peeled, but hasn’t peeled enough to come off on its own. Did I mention that it is intensely itchy? You cannot imagine this itch!

My New Wish

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am beyond grateful that most of the weeping has stopped and I’m in the process of healing. I am beyond grateful that my fingers no longer look like sausages attached to my hands. I am overjoyed that my grip seems to be coming back and I am beginning to be able to open bottles, use a knife, and brush my own hair again.

But it ITCHES!!!! And it burns. And it feels like my hands are two sizes too big for my skin because of how drawn up the skin is. So my new wish is for this dry/peeling phase to be short-lived and that some semblance of normal skin returns to me soon. And that I can figure out whatever caused this to begin with so that perhaps I can avoid other breakouts in the future. Oh, how I wish!