A New Light-by Mimi

Psoriasis? Flaky, red, itchy and inflamed skin? Joint pains? Anyway that’s all a new term for me (back then I mean). I found out that psoriasis is basically a skin disease when rapid production of skin cells that is triggered by abnormal lymphocytes from the blood. Hmm…that is the purpose of the medication I was prescribed to. The doctor told me that they should help me “clean up my blood”. I felt as if I am a vampire or something but I guess that was his layman term in explaining the situation to me so that I won’t panic.

I also found out that psoriasis commonly affects your knees, ankles, elbow and that explained why mine is so flaky and hideous all the time. But before knowing this I thought I was not cleaning myself hard enough. I used to brush my ankles and knees long and hard until my skin bled and became raw. That was 20 years ago, I never do that anymore because I know it is not because of my hygiene. But I can vouch for it, after taking Transfer factor from 4Life Research that part of the area is still hideous but not as bad as before (besides it only has been 3 months since I started taking TF).

I learned that there are several different types of psoriasis including psoriasis vulgaris (normal type), pustular psoriasis (something like small blisters), guttate psoriasis (small, drop like spots) and inverse psoriasis (in the folds like of the underarms, breast, navel, and buttocks which normally makes your skin so smooth and red or inflamed).

Don’t ask me which one I have because honestly I don’t know. All I can tell you is that at first my psoriasis affected my whole body and face with inflamed wounds, skin breaks and flakes. After the treatment it all seems to subside except for my scalp, knees, ankles and elbow and I have been living with it since. Then a few years back I had a huge outbreak at my thigh, navel, butt and under my breasts. The doctor gave me pills and topical cream to soothe the skin. The outbreak seems to have subsided but there is still a huge area on my thigh and butt; where my skin cells are still affected by psoriasis. I am telling you it is hard to lecture a group of students when your skin is experiencing that uncomfortable burning sensation.

The scars were very noticeable; I have tried everything and all sorts of creams to make the scars fade away. I learned to live with the scars and have been trying hard to prevent any further outbreaks. These all changed when I started taking 4Life Transfer Factor about 3 months back, I also applied their lotion called 4Life Enummi and guess what?!! My thighs and butt are now cleared without any scars in sight and I feel great because I no longer live with the fear of scraping my scars unnecessarily whenever I put on clothes. Isn’t it grand??

Looking at the different perspective with all the things that had happened to me, I would be fooling you if I say that I am peachy about everything. My mood swing was like a roller coaster especially when it comes to my perspective towards life (doc says the effect of the steroids could explain the mood swings but I like to think it is me instead of the tablet).  As I grow older, I think God would have never tested me on all of this if I couldn’t endure it. I guess I am lucky to have experienced this and I won’t take things for granted since I now will have to compromise a large part of my life with psoriasis. So I guess no matter what just be thankful for everything you have and do and take time to do the small stuff just to remind ourselves that we are human.

Even though we need reminders that we are just human sometimes its fun to be ANYTHING BUT human..that's me with Syidah the Pirate..


Later,
Mimi

Welcome to My Life (Part 2)- by Mimi

So now I am 125kg, suffering joint pains, with some flares every now then which leave scars. I still couldn’t stand heat and my gastric are becoming worse, everywhere you go people tend to look at you disgustingly because you are obese, make jokes at your dreams because to them the reason why I am so fat is because I am lazy, dirty and stupid; in a nutshell what a wonderful place the world would have been if it weren’t for me. I never went shopping for clothes cause of my size, who am I kidding?! I could never be as beautiful as everyone else. There are times I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. I guess I have been keeping the hurt, hatred feelings for so long it is eating me inside.

Irony part is I am now a lecturer, whereby giving advice, nurture young minds is what I do. I am terrified when the first time I entered into a classroom thinking to myself, “Mimi what the hell were you thinking!! People will look at you funny again!”. Thank God all went well, I loved teaching and I taught them about life (rather than Tax all the time). All my students have tasks that they have to perform, do good deed at least once a day and never let anybody bring you down. I figured nobody should endure what I have gone through (sometimes still do!). The world is as bad as it is, the least thing I can do is trying to make it better with the power of knowledge. Here’s the irony part, people who don’t know me thinks that I am a happy go lucky person with loads of love and cares in the world; actually deep down I am very scared and still trying to avoid meeting strangers at all cost! I am not as out-going as people think I am. The lesser people I meet, the lesser they will talk about me. I mean how do you response when you are in an elevator to work when few idiots gave you their brilliant comments “ I am so disgusted by you please do not stand so close to me! Eat that’s all you do!!” other comments would be “ Oh dear I am so afraid just looking at you, your are so big and fat, if you are my child I would die  of embarrassment right now”. God, these people actually have no conscience at all and they are breeding throughout the world! I can’t tell them my life story saying that I am like this cause I am not well can I? I wish I could fall into a hole or become invisible.

Things will my self esteem went so bad until one day I reached a cross road, being hospitalized for acute bronchitis (great more drug to make me round!!). I started saying that I have to make full use of my life (at least what’s left of it anyway), with the help of my friends and family slowly started to gain my composure and strength in life.

I took dancing lessons, Latin American and was quite good at it. The instructor said anyone can dance despite of their size. Now I have been dancing for almost three years, taking dancing exams (eat that you mean and shallow people!) and PASSED. Though I have tried exercising and eating healthily, my body weight is yet to show any obvious changes reduce that much. Then somebody told me that the steroid intakes in the past had somehow influenced this phenomenon. 

 Me, passed my bronzed level Latin with highly commendable..

One fine day, a dear friend of mine introduced me to this kind lady who suggested me to take Transfer Factor by 4Life Reasearch. I said to her thanks but I think I will pass. Then she talked about the scientific thingy no drugs, all natural. Then I told her autoimmune has no cure and she insisted that I should give it a try.  I did some research on the net about 4LifeTransfer Factor and came across a lot of positive comments yet, I was still a little skeptical. I mean everybody can write comments. Up until I told my friends on 4Life Transfer Factor; suddenly all stories started to pour on how 4Life Transfer Factor help them to improve the quality of their lives. They advice me to try, I have known them for years and trusted their judgments but, I hesitated at first because,  I always attract freaky stuff like bees to honey. Then I started to think what if?, what else can I lose? You never know. No matter how old I get I have always been a sucker for being optimistic and I do, still believe in miracles.

So, I started to take 4Life Transfer Factor, for about 2 month’s time, I noticed that my joint pains have started to heal, the migraines and the gastric attacks are gone, and my menstrual cycle was getting better. The best part was the scars which previously would not heal, are gone! I don’t rely on drugs anymore (if not they are always in my purse, just in case). I know we are not in a movie where every wishes come true just like that. Things will take time to heal after all it has experienced in the past 19 years. 

I love to share this with anyone who wants to try; it seems that many people have already known about 4LifeTransfer Factor and have already started using it for themselves. But there are still more out there who don’t even know that there are always other alternatives. We are no Saints, but God will always listen to your needs and request; however God will not give to you just like that, you have to strive without giving up on hope and faith. God will help you through the means you least expected.

This is my first time writing about me, why am I writing this? Well nothing better to do maybe; or maybe just want to let you know that when things are as hopeless as they seem to be, if your heart is true, everything’s will turn out fine. As for me, I know how autoimmune can change a person’s life though there were times when I felt frustrated and wanted to gave up, there is a little voice in me saying “What if”.

Later,

Mimi

Welcome to My Life (Part 1)- by Mimi

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.

When people looked and stared..I guess this is what they see.. not a bad look I might say ..

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