As a young teenager I loved to swim, play volleyball, badminton, and bowling and of course dance. Even though I was pretty bad in sports such as relays etc, I am quite good in the ones I mentioned above. I have to put all that to a halt when funny things started to happen to me when I was about 14. It started with simple allergies which got worse rapidly! I can’t eat anything much because it will make me puffy and blotchy; worse still, I can’t sweat even a little. When I sweat, my skin will start to break before it bleeds. The painful wound would then get itchy and bigger. First, it was just at certain parts of my hands (small patches) then as time goes by it got worse until it infected my neck, face, body, legs...come to think of it, nearly every single part of my body! In addition to this, for most of the nights, my skin became puffy and red. I had to get a jab from the docs most of the nights, the puffiness did not only affected my skin, it also puffed up throat and lungs thus making it difficult to breathe. Went to the doctors (a whole loads of doctors) from GPs to specialists; some of them even said that I might be anemic, some says its leukemia, others say eczema. In short, I have gone through the lot of tests and the results were all negative. Some specialist even said that I am allergic to plants.
Here I am with loads of plants and allergic to it..I didn’t know what is wrong with me but all I know is my life had changed drastically, out of 5 days I would normally go to school for 3 days due to my condition. I could not stand heat at all. Not to mention the kids in high school were pretty mean to me most of the time. I have been ignored as if I have some kind of plague or something. Well even some of my family members would look at me disapprovingly. I tried not to go out too much because people looked at me as though I was some kind of zombie coming back from the dead. The disgusted looks on people’s faces, the way they jeered, and the mean jokes at my expense were not helping. Parents are very supportive of me but I never told them what bothered me; I preferred to hide it all inside and when these things happened I would just normally smile or just ignore them. Up until today, I think I am pretty good in hiding my feelings to others.
As when I turn 17, things were still pretty much the same. My face became scared with wounds that could never heal and my skin was still flaky. At that age I would do anything to make the pain go away. One of the girl in school said that I should put tooth paste to treat the wound; feeling desperate I did; but it got much worse. Whenever I looked around, I saw my friends were busy living teenagers’ lives. This made me ponder about mine. I didn’t have that luxury; I was busy preventing myself from bleeding as much so it would not hurt. Being tormented and being made the butt of all jokes by everyone else is the least thing on my mind back then. Noticing the lack of positive improvement on my skin condition, my parents decided to take me to a skin specialist who gave me the meds and of course miraculously everything started to heal. I was so happy after all these years. Little did I know that there were other problems in line waiting for me.
The doctor did not explain to me on my condition, only said that I have psoriasis. So he gave me the meds to take every 2 days. Doctors back then did not explain much to you especially when you are just a teenager. My skin began to heal but the scars were still there. Thank God that the scars on my face are completely healed. But then I noticed something else, I began to gain weight like no body’s business. I went from 65kg to basically 120kg. I started to eat less and still it did not work! Now I know how Mr. Marshmallow puff would feel. Tried dieting, exercising even taking some diet pills and yet none of them worked.
Now a new type of battle rages on with new types of torments. That was 16 years ago. All those years, my psoriasis was not cured, it is still with me. It was much later did I know that I have an autoimmune disorder which means the immune system is attacking the healthy cells. (Great, even my immune system doesn’t know who are its enemies and simply decided to attack itself, sheesh! What luck!). One thing I know about autoimmune is that stress will only cause it to flare up. I have a few my shares on that one..and am still relying on drugs. There was a time my psoriasis flared up very badly my lower thighs are affected. I cannot even walk because of the pain and the blood. There was nothing much that I could do other than taking steroids to heal it.
The problem I have now is not just the psoriasis itself, but includes the few other side effects of taking steroids over the past few years. I have MEGA migraines all the time, joint pains, my menstrual cycle was a mess and the pain was excruciating. I normally have to take a powerful pain killer to reduce the pain. Some people have very funny sense of humor (especially when you are in pain). The solution to bad menstrual pain is to get married quickly! Then everything will be alright. If everything can be solved by marriage I guess the world will be a better place by now. No offence, I have nothing against marriage but for once, I would really appreciate give me a remedy that really works....to be continued
Later,
Mimi
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