Things are going pretty well here, all things considered.
For only the second time in 18 years or so, I'm getting some serious treatment for my psoriasis. 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.
I've had it since I was 17 and a small patch appeared on my back, the size of my quarter. It's gone up and down a few times, but it has never gone away entirely, and each time it's flared up, it's come back worse. At the moment, it covers most of my legs, my arms, parts of my stomach, my scalp, my shoulders, my forehead, and almost all my back.
Plus a few other spots.
A previous dermatologist had prescribed some topical steroids that worked like a charm and cleared up everything within about three weeks, so I was expecting something similar this time. The dermatologist I was referred to this time didn't want to do that. Steroids are steroids, after all, even when they're topical; and coating almost half your body with steroids twice a day isn't something most doctors recommend for the long haul.
So instead, I'm getting phototherapy. With a name like that, you'd almost expect it to involve talking to a psychiatrist about how your mother never loved you and always had you airbrushed out of the family pictures, but it actually involves being exposed to ultraviolet light, since that's pretty much the only things that clears up psoriasis naturally.
If you consider it natural to stand naked in a chamber lined with bright lights while you wear nothing but a pair of sunglasses shaped like swimming goggles, and hold a paper towel over your most personal anatomy, that is.
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.
The only part that really bites 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.)
The other big news is that I've just committed myself for the next two years to a role-playing adventure using AD&D, version 3.5. It's a major transition for me, since I haven't played D&D in about 20 years, since I was in middle school. I actually got rid of all my equipment back when I was in college. The only roleplaying I've done since has been a little bit of NeverWorld and some live-action roleplaying as a vampire about eight years ago.
Showing posts with label psoriasis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psoriasis. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Going under the light to combat psoriasis
For only the second time in eighteen years or so, I'm getting some serious treatment for my psoriasis.
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.
So instead, I'm getting phototherapy. This does not involve talking about how my mother didn't love me and always had me airbrushed out of the family pictures because of the unsightly blemishes on my arms. It instead involves being exposed to ultraviolet light, the only natural way to clear up psoriasis.
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.
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.
Thursday, August 12, 1999
It's always an adventure, living with psoriasis
Something about a medical condition brings out the nascent expert in everyone. It doesn't matter if you have the hiccups or acute appendicitis; once people see you have a problem, they're all over you with advice.
I know this because I have psoriasis, a stress-related condition that produces dry skin flakes that rain from my scalp and arms like the dandruff from hell. The flakes themselves leave behind unsightly raw patches of skin, which attract questions and sometimes concern over what happened to me.
I prefer the questions to come from children, who assume I have some sort of "booboos." No adult would ever believe me that an airplane hit my head, or that my wife rubs my arms with sandpaper every night to leave them all rough and crusty.
One boy at church to whom I've told the latter story several times recently wised up to my fallaciousness. He wants to know what my wife really does to me.
Adults usually assume I have poison ivy. Now I'm aware people can get poison ivy in unusual places, particularly when they're out in the woods without toilet paper, but don't you think it would be a little odd to rub poison ivy all over your scalp, back, arms and legs?
I'll admit I do some weird things, but having a poison ivy fetish just isn't one of them.
To my knowledge, the only real cure for psoriasis is ultraviolet light; everything else -- like coal tar, topical steroids or whatever else -- simply makes the affected skin more sensitive to that light. But that doesn't stop all sorts of other remedies from hitting me on all sides.
"Yessir, I once had psoriasis, but then I found by rubbing a quart of 10W30 motor oil into it and wrapping it in a fresh boneless chicken breast every day, I was able to clear it right up," said one fellow. "If you like, I can get a chicken poultice for you right now."
Um ... no thanks.
"There must be some sort of antibiotics they can give you," another person said.
Not really. Antibiotics fight infections, not genetic conditions, and I don't want someone rewriting my DNA. That's too "Gattaca." Unless they give me some sort of superpowers. If they help me grow a nice rack of antlers, or give me the superhuman ability to read road maps, gene splicing would be okay.
"Maybe they could irradiate your skin to get rid of the psoriasis," another person once suggested.
Psoriasis is bad enough; I don't want skin cancer too.
"Skin grafts."
Puh-lease!
Despite the homegrown quacks, there are some people with legitimate success stories I want to look into, usually involving one topical cream or another. Phil Murphy, a fellow missionary I knew in Haiti, had something that worked just fine for his wife.
"Lonnie used to have psoriasis like you," Phil said. "But it all cleared up when she gave birth to Michelle."
That would be really handy in another two months if I were the one pregnant, but since my wife is carrying the baby, somehow I doubt it will help me much at all. If anything, the increased responsibility will just make my psoriasis flare up even more.
My experiences with psoriasis go back 12 years, when I was an exchange student in Rotorua, New Zealand. The first patch I ever grew was located on my lower back and was about the size of a silver dollar. It finally cleared up when I was in college, but not before my scalp had erupted in it.
Since college, work-related stress has caused the psoriasis to flare up again and again. It's all over my scalp, where it's mostly covered by my hair, except on the top of my forehead and behind my ears.
I have other spots the size of small pancakes on my arms and legs, a particularly large one Natasha refers to as "the goose egg" and enough smaller ones on my arms, legs, sides, back and stomach that I look like a living connect-the-dots puzzle.
Once or twice we've tried looking for shapes like people often do with clouds.
"Does that look like a camel to you?"
"No, it looks more like Mount Rushmore. See? Here's Washington's head, and Lincoln's ..."
In biblical times, people with psoriasis were considered lepers and consigned to leper colonies, where they would spend their lives as social outcasts, and eventually get the real thing. Today, that's true only of a little less than one person in three.
My wife is a traditionalist, however, and wants me to ring a bell as I walk about, and shout "Leper outcast unclean," the treatment the Bible prescribes for lepers in Leviticus 13.
In the end, I'm told it will all become moot. Psoriasis fades away with age, so by the time I'm 80, I'll just have to worry about liver spots instead.
 This is not my back. But it could be. |
I prefer the questions to come from children, who assume I have some sort of "booboos." No adult would ever believe me that an airplane hit my head, or that my wife rubs my arms with sandpaper every night to leave them all rough and crusty.
One boy at church to whom I've told the latter story several times recently wised up to my fallaciousness. He wants to know what my wife really does to me.
Adults usually assume I have poison ivy. Now I'm aware people can get poison ivy in unusual places, particularly when they're out in the woods without toilet paper, but don't you think it would be a little odd to rub poison ivy all over your scalp, back, arms and legs?
I'll admit I do some weird things, but having a poison ivy fetish just isn't one of them.
To my knowledge, the only real cure for psoriasis is ultraviolet light; everything else -- like coal tar, topical steroids or whatever else -- simply makes the affected skin more sensitive to that light. But that doesn't stop all sorts of other remedies from hitting me on all sides.
"Yessir, I once had psoriasis, but then I found by rubbing a quart of 10W30 motor oil into it and wrapping it in a fresh boneless chicken breast every day, I was able to clear it right up," said one fellow. "If you like, I can get a chicken poultice for you right now."
Um ... no thanks.
"There must be some sort of antibiotics they can give you," another person said.
Not really. Antibiotics fight infections, not genetic conditions, and I don't want someone rewriting my DNA. That's too "Gattaca." Unless they give me some sort of superpowers. If they help me grow a nice rack of antlers, or give me the superhuman ability to read road maps, gene splicing would be okay.
"Maybe they could irradiate your skin to get rid of the psoriasis," another person once suggested.
Psoriasis is bad enough; I don't want skin cancer too.
"Skin grafts."
Puh-lease!
Despite the homegrown quacks, there are some people with legitimate success stories I want to look into, usually involving one topical cream or another. Phil Murphy, a fellow missionary I knew in Haiti, had something that worked just fine for his wife.
"Lonnie used to have psoriasis like you," Phil said. "But it all cleared up when she gave birth to Michelle."
That would be really handy in another two months if I were the one pregnant, but since my wife is carrying the baby, somehow I doubt it will help me much at all. If anything, the increased responsibility will just make my psoriasis flare up even more.
My experiences with psoriasis go back 12 years, when I was an exchange student in Rotorua, New Zealand. The first patch I ever grew was located on my lower back and was about the size of a silver dollar. It finally cleared up when I was in college, but not before my scalp had erupted in it.
Since college, work-related stress has caused the psoriasis to flare up again and again. It's all over my scalp, where it's mostly covered by my hair, except on the top of my forehead and behind my ears.
I have other spots the size of small pancakes on my arms and legs, a particularly large one Natasha refers to as "the goose egg" and enough smaller ones on my arms, legs, sides, back and stomach that I look like a living connect-the-dots puzzle.
Once or twice we've tried looking for shapes like people often do with clouds.
"Does that look like a camel to you?"
"No, it looks more like Mount Rushmore. See? Here's Washington's head, and Lincoln's ..."
In biblical times, people with psoriasis were considered lepers and consigned to leper colonies, where they would spend their lives as social outcasts, and eventually get the real thing. Today, that's true only of a little less than one person in three.
My wife is a traditionalist, however, and wants me to ring a bell as I walk about, and shout "Leper outcast unclean," the treatment the Bible prescribes for lepers in Leviticus 13.
In the end, I'm told it will all become moot. Psoriasis fades away with age, so by the time I'm 80, I'll just have to worry about liver spots instead.
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