Psoriasis, if you don't know, is a skin ailment that's genetic in nature and that flares up under stress. It looks like red, raw skin with white scaly flakes, if for no other reason than it's red, raw skin with white scaly flakes. At the moment, it covers 40 percent of my body, including my legs, my arms, parts of my stomach, my scalp, my shoulders, my forehead, my generative organs and almost all my back, plus a few spots on my buttocks.
I've had it since I was 17, when it was a small patch on my back, the size of my quarter. It's gone up and down a few times, but has never gone away entirely. Each time it's flared up, it's come back worse.
A previous dermatologist had prescribed some topical steroids that worked like a charm and cleared up everything within about three weeks. Unfortunately, that was before I started working at The Pit, more commonly known as WCN, and it soon roared back to life.
The dermatologist I was referred to this time didn't want to do that. My psoriasis is extensive and topical steroids are steroids, after all, and coating more than half your body with steroids twice a day isn't something most doctors recommend for the long haul.
 I get a whole booth to myself. |
That is, it's natural if you consider it natural to stand naked in a chamber lined with bright lights while you wear nothing but a pair of devo sunglasses shaped like swimming goggles and hold a paper towel over your most personal anatomy.
The downside to all this is that my share of the office visits comes to $10 a visit, and I have to visit the dermatologist's office three times a week for about four months to make this all work, so we're talking about $500 in co-payments.
The upshot to that is that I'm also taking a second medical treatment that involves injecting myself every Monday and Thursday morning with a psoriasis-treatment drug. Since both treatments are FDA-approved, I'm getting a combination of treatments with a proven track record of success, for free.
I'm taking part in a study to see how much faster patients respond to the treatments when they're combined. So not only am I getting the doctors' visits (and the drug) for free, I'm getting paid about $800 to do it. It just keeps getting better.
The downside is that I have to inject myself, and I really hate needles.
Thank God I'm not diabetic. I can't imagine injecting myself with insulin three times a day.
1 comment:
Found this:
When Psoriasis Gets Under Your Skin and in Your Joints
"More than 4.5 million adults suffer from psoriasis, a chronic condition that causes red, flaky patches of thickened skin. This uncontrollable overgrowth of skin cells can appear on the scalp, hands, feet and genitalia. But the lesions most commonly appear on the elbows, knees and lower back, which might give a hint as to why almost one third of psoriasis sufferers also have a compounding disease, psoriatic arthritis, which affects the joints and can be crippling."
Don't know if that article will help you, but there you go.
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