Another month gone by. I've been flaring on and off since December but nothing crazy. I had a great month around October/November and would probably say that was the peak (condition of my skin) of this whole process so far. Adding to the recent flares have been a few bouts of colds which seem to linger and never fully go away before another one attacks. I think my immune system is still suppressed, hence catching every single cold I come across. Additionally, detoxing off all the drugs I was taking is much more difficult than I thought it would be. I'm only posting today because I'm having a good day. Some days (or hours) Im incredibly sad and feel overcome with despair, while others I'm shocked by the sense of just feeling normal. My skin is super dry on good days; red, irritated, and itchy on bad. I rarely ooze and if I do, it's minimal. Rarely do baths burn like they once did. Truly the hardest part now is just waiting to live a normal life already. Its been over a year and there's so much I want to do! I'm sick of being home when I feel crappy and I'm sick of being tired all the time. When will the adrenals heal?? I just got some more bloodwork done, should hear results back later this week. Can't wait to see the results because the last round of bloodwork I did was at the very beginning of TSW. It was that doctor who told me to get off the topical steroids as I would never heal my eczema while suppressing the immune system. So I'm very interested to see how the results now will compare to the first ones. Will my adrenals have shown improvement? Will I still have leaky gut? Will I still have blood sugar issues?
My current regime includes getting around 30 minutes a day of sunshine, eating a healthy whole foods diet, taking probiotics and omega 3s, taking a nightly bath with no moisturizer, and trying to get 8-10 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. That means I'm taking a nap on most days again. I usually get around 7 hours of sleep a night and then another 1-3 during the day, depending on if I'm flaring or not - I sleep much more when flaring. I still wake up once every night and then fall back asleep within 45 minutes. I am taking 20 mg of valium (10mg at bedtime, another 10mg when I wake up in the middle of the night) and alternating between 5mg of ambien and 5 mg of melatonin a night. Then I take 25 mg of benadryl (aka sleep aid) when I wake up in the middle of the night. I was at 30 mg of valium and 10 mg of ambien & melatonin so at least those have decreased. I'm waiting another 2 weeks to continue detoxing off valium because I have family coming in town and do not want to be a weepy mess when they're here. I'm fully off vicodin and gabapentin (hooray!) and let me tell you, that was not easy. I seriously considered checking into a rehab center for a few days, that's how bad I felt. And I took it slooooooow. I can't believe how much it affected me mentally given how slowly I decreased my dosage. But at least I'm more than halfway done detoxing! Anyway, below are 2 pics from yesterday. Nothing too bad, just shows the dryness. My worst areas are still behind the knees and top of wrists.
I blew up the face pic bc its hard to see but my skin is very bumpy. Its almost like raised patches of dry skin
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