Claiming back my body
Hi everyone!
I'm currently stuck in the most horrible limbo of all, and that is the limbo of having no job, no place to study, and nothing to do! My flight to Scotland is on the 4th of September, and so until then I have the entirety of August absolutely free. Most of this month has gone by already, thank goodness, but I still have about two weeks left. I don't mean that I'm somehow too eager to go because I don't like anyone here anymore, definitely not! I just hate being in that liminal place where I'm not really doing anything with a purpose and am mostly just wasting time at home. Something as exciting as moving to another country is really difficult to wait patiently for.
Anyway, as some of you might know, I got a tattoo about three weeks ago. It was a gift from my dear friend, and I'm still absolutely in love with it. As many people have already asked me about the meaning of it, I figured I might as well write a post about it since its not that easy of a thing to explain. Or at least the longer version isn't! The shorter version is that for me it symbolizes home, and something very dear to me. The other meaning is also pretty symbolic, but mostly it was a way for me to do something concrete about an issue that took about a year of my life and from which I still carry marks all over my body. If you want to just know what the tattoo means to me you can skip to the last part, as a large portion of this post is just me explaining the history of my experiences with my skin.
I've grown up pretty healthy in the sense that I haven't broken any bones and haven't really had any health issues more serious than a cold or the occasional stomach flu. The only issue that has been constant in my life since I was about 14 is my skin. Even then, for years, nothing else would be wrong except a rash I developed in the crook of my elbow on my right arm. Every winter and summer it would get really bad, I would go to the doctor and they would give me special cream for it. Some years it didn't surface at all. Some years it was so bad I had to wrap my arm up in gauze so I'd be able to sleep and function without breaking the skin and causing pain.
Well, at the beginning of last summer (2014), that area of my skin started flaring up again. I applied the same stuff I had always applied, but for some reason it started to spread. I soon had a similar kind of rash (I will spare the details of it all during this post as its really quite horrible) on both of my arms, and as the summer progressed it spread to my lower back. My ankles were also ridden with this same problem. My mother and I wanted to try as many "natural" remedies as we could, as the constant applying of strong cortisone was not good for the skin. We had no idea what it was and why it was happening, but I tried a lot of things. Turns out it was not for lack of sun, and the way I ate definitely had nothing to do with it. I started taking vitamins. I had about 8 a day, including zinc and other things that were supposed to help with irritated skin. It did not help.
Near the end of the summer it just kept getting worse and worse. I had a summer job that summer, and would try to cover up my arms and legs as much as possible. As soon as I'd get home I'd have to apply horribly stinging stuff and would just suffer for the rest of the day. My arms and lower back got so bad that I could no longer bear to shower, so I called the doctors office for an appointment. I explained my situation thoroughly but only got an appointment about two weeks from then. It was too long of a time for me to wait so I just said yes to it and ended up going to the emergency room later that day. I waited for five hours to be taken into the office, told I had a bacterial infection and handed a prescription for some antibiotics. I took the pills for two weeks, during which the spots cleared up quite a lot. I stopped taking them as the pills ran out, but the skin problems just came right back. I had no idea what to do. Then, as my third and final year of school began it entered the last and worst stage.
At the time the rash was covering my arms, my ankles, my lower back, parts of my thighs, my neck, my hairline, my earlobes, my scalp, around my mouth, and around my eyes. I itched like crazy all the time, and soon noticed that I would start picking at my skin almost unconsciously. The pain and itchiness meant that it took me hours every night to get to sleep. I could no longer shower at all and had to take baths several times a week which was very time consuming. I was so desperate I was ready to try anything.
Then, a good friend of mine showed me an ad in the paper. It was for a medicine study at the hospital, and they were looking for people with irritated skin that could take part in the study. I jumped at the idea of getting a specialist to look at my skin and the opportunity of trying a new medicine made me hopeful. So I called the doctor and scheduled and appointment.
I showed up to the doctors office and they looked at my skin and told me I qualified for the study! I was to come back next week for blood tests and samples and an EKG and then they could go ahead with including me in the study. I took home the papers with all the fine print about the study and after discussing it with my parents I decided that I might as well try it.
Two weeks later I went to the doctors again. It was all quite hectic and I had to come back later for a blood test because the previous one just hadn't worked out. I was still living without any relief and it made the waiting even worse. Then I was called up to the office the following week, for the last bits of information before I started the new medicine. I had signed the papers already, and so it was all almost on its way.
The doctor sat me down and told me that some percentage value in my blood was way lower than what they needed for the study and that I couldn't participate after all. This was a big disappointment, especially since I had taken several trips to the hospital during school hours, and it took me about an hour to get there each time. I felt like I had wasted time.
However, there was a catch. This catch was my salvation. In the papers it had said, that if it turns out I can't continue in the study after signing the papers, the hospital would take care of my condition for free. So, even though I didn't get into the study, I got FREE care from a skincare specialist, which would have otherwise been a very expensive endeavor.
So, I was given a prescription for this special cream that was used to treat serious cases. It cost over 80€ per tube, and at the time as my body was pretty much covered I went through about a tube per month. This went on for at least five months. The stuff worked, it really did, but it also had a side effect. As it was a cream that activated the natural healing of the skin, if I forgot to put it on, new patches of irritated skin would appear. The next few months were the most difficult because I had to be very diligent. As I woke up, I would have to slather this stuff on. Then, when I got home I had to put on another kind of cream. Then, in the evening, the special stuff again. The smell of the cream was ingrained into my favorite t-shirts, and though I could now shower again, the constant high maintenance care for my skin was a burden.
I have now gotten over most of this skin disease. The diagnose really was just extremely sensitive atopic eczema, and after months and months of treating it it has gone away for the most part. I still get the odd flare up around specific places on my arms, or end up scratching my leg a bit too much and causing a patch or two, but with the help of the medicine I have I can mostly keep those under control, and they do not bother my life in any great way.
I used to be scared of wearing t-shirts, because my arms looked so horrible. I would cry, all the time. There was a period of two weeks when school had started up again, where the irritation had spread all around my face, and I couldn't bear to look at anyone. I stopped looking people in the eye, really wishing to be as unnoticed as possible. I was in such an emotionally fragile place, and operated with so few hours of sleep every day, that I would start crying in the hallway sometimes, just unable to control my emotions. To everyone who supported me through this experience, really, thank you. To those who never mentioned it to my face, who didn't push me for answers, thank you.
I am a very naturally pale person. The scarring from this "disease" is evident all around my body. Lighter and darker spots cover my arms, my ankles, really any part that was really bad during the worst months. I've gotten used to looking a bit like a giraffe, but I still feel a bit of a pang in my chest when I see pictures of people with completely smooth arms and then look at my own splotchy body. The marks don't bother me in any other way except aesthetically, and I'm still afraid that people will think my skin is ugly.
I know it sounds really odd to get a tattoo on your skin after having horrible skin problems. My skin issues had pretty much cleared up by February of this year, and I got this tattoo at the beginning of August. Its on my left forearm, a spot that hasn't suffered from any skin irritation before and was thus a "safe" place in my mind. I researched the topic, and apparently tattoos do not make atopic skin any worse as long as they're taken on a spot that is not currently inflamed, so I felt good about it.
I really did nothing to cause this skin problem. It was a combination of dry weather, sensitive skin and a tiny infection that just ended up spreading. For so long I tried to find a reason as to why I deserved this. Why I deserved this horrible thing that limited me so much. There was nothing I could do to control it besides try to get rid of the existing spots and sores. So, for me, getting this tattoo was a way for me to do something to my skin on purpose. For once, it was my decision what I wanted on my skin, and I had full control of it. It reminds me not only of home and friends but also of the experience of having absolutely no control over what was happening to me, and now, I have finally gained control again.
This was a long piece but I can't apologize for that. I don't know why this feels like a natural time to share this part of my life, but here it is. I still consider my last year of school to be the best, even if half of it was spent in a very difficult place in my mind. Again, thank you to my friends and my family, many of you kept telling me I was not disgusting and that I was still worthy of your friendship and for that I thank you.
- Becks
I'm currently stuck in the most horrible limbo of all, and that is the limbo of having no job, no place to study, and nothing to do! My flight to Scotland is on the 4th of September, and so until then I have the entirety of August absolutely free. Most of this month has gone by already, thank goodness, but I still have about two weeks left. I don't mean that I'm somehow too eager to go because I don't like anyone here anymore, definitely not! I just hate being in that liminal place where I'm not really doing anything with a purpose and am mostly just wasting time at home. Something as exciting as moving to another country is really difficult to wait patiently for.
Anyway, as some of you might know, I got a tattoo about three weeks ago. It was a gift from my dear friend, and I'm still absolutely in love with it. As many people have already asked me about the meaning of it, I figured I might as well write a post about it since its not that easy of a thing to explain. Or at least the longer version isn't! The shorter version is that for me it symbolizes home, and something very dear to me. The other meaning is also pretty symbolic, but mostly it was a way for me to do something concrete about an issue that took about a year of my life and from which I still carry marks all over my body. If you want to just know what the tattoo means to me you can skip to the last part, as a large portion of this post is just me explaining the history of my experiences with my skin.
I've grown up pretty healthy in the sense that I haven't broken any bones and haven't really had any health issues more serious than a cold or the occasional stomach flu. The only issue that has been constant in my life since I was about 14 is my skin. Even then, for years, nothing else would be wrong except a rash I developed in the crook of my elbow on my right arm. Every winter and summer it would get really bad, I would go to the doctor and they would give me special cream for it. Some years it didn't surface at all. Some years it was so bad I had to wrap my arm up in gauze so I'd be able to sleep and function without breaking the skin and causing pain.
Well, at the beginning of last summer (2014), that area of my skin started flaring up again. I applied the same stuff I had always applied, but for some reason it started to spread. I soon had a similar kind of rash (I will spare the details of it all during this post as its really quite horrible) on both of my arms, and as the summer progressed it spread to my lower back. My ankles were also ridden with this same problem. My mother and I wanted to try as many "natural" remedies as we could, as the constant applying of strong cortisone was not good for the skin. We had no idea what it was and why it was happening, but I tried a lot of things. Turns out it was not for lack of sun, and the way I ate definitely had nothing to do with it. I started taking vitamins. I had about 8 a day, including zinc and other things that were supposed to help with irritated skin. It did not help.
Near the end of the summer it just kept getting worse and worse. I had a summer job that summer, and would try to cover up my arms and legs as much as possible. As soon as I'd get home I'd have to apply horribly stinging stuff and would just suffer for the rest of the day. My arms and lower back got so bad that I could no longer bear to shower, so I called the doctors office for an appointment. I explained my situation thoroughly but only got an appointment about two weeks from then. It was too long of a time for me to wait so I just said yes to it and ended up going to the emergency room later that day. I waited for five hours to be taken into the office, told I had a bacterial infection and handed a prescription for some antibiotics. I took the pills for two weeks, during which the spots cleared up quite a lot. I stopped taking them as the pills ran out, but the skin problems just came right back. I had no idea what to do. Then, as my third and final year of school began it entered the last and worst stage.
At the time the rash was covering my arms, my ankles, my lower back, parts of my thighs, my neck, my hairline, my earlobes, my scalp, around my mouth, and around my eyes. I itched like crazy all the time, and soon noticed that I would start picking at my skin almost unconsciously. The pain and itchiness meant that it took me hours every night to get to sleep. I could no longer shower at all and had to take baths several times a week which was very time consuming. I was so desperate I was ready to try anything.
Then, a good friend of mine showed me an ad in the paper. It was for a medicine study at the hospital, and they were looking for people with irritated skin that could take part in the study. I jumped at the idea of getting a specialist to look at my skin and the opportunity of trying a new medicine made me hopeful. So I called the doctor and scheduled and appointment.
I showed up to the doctors office and they looked at my skin and told me I qualified for the study! I was to come back next week for blood tests and samples and an EKG and then they could go ahead with including me in the study. I took home the papers with all the fine print about the study and after discussing it with my parents I decided that I might as well try it.
Two weeks later I went to the doctors again. It was all quite hectic and I had to come back later for a blood test because the previous one just hadn't worked out. I was still living without any relief and it made the waiting even worse. Then I was called up to the office the following week, for the last bits of information before I started the new medicine. I had signed the papers already, and so it was all almost on its way.
The doctor sat me down and told me that some percentage value in my blood was way lower than what they needed for the study and that I couldn't participate after all. This was a big disappointment, especially since I had taken several trips to the hospital during school hours, and it took me about an hour to get there each time. I felt like I had wasted time.
However, there was a catch. This catch was my salvation. In the papers it had said, that if it turns out I can't continue in the study after signing the papers, the hospital would take care of my condition for free. So, even though I didn't get into the study, I got FREE care from a skincare specialist, which would have otherwise been a very expensive endeavor.
So, I was given a prescription for this special cream that was used to treat serious cases. It cost over 80€ per tube, and at the time as my body was pretty much covered I went through about a tube per month. This went on for at least five months. The stuff worked, it really did, but it also had a side effect. As it was a cream that activated the natural healing of the skin, if I forgot to put it on, new patches of irritated skin would appear. The next few months were the most difficult because I had to be very diligent. As I woke up, I would have to slather this stuff on. Then, when I got home I had to put on another kind of cream. Then, in the evening, the special stuff again. The smell of the cream was ingrained into my favorite t-shirts, and though I could now shower again, the constant high maintenance care for my skin was a burden.
I have now gotten over most of this skin disease. The diagnose really was just extremely sensitive atopic eczema, and after months and months of treating it it has gone away for the most part. I still get the odd flare up around specific places on my arms, or end up scratching my leg a bit too much and causing a patch or two, but with the help of the medicine I have I can mostly keep those under control, and they do not bother my life in any great way.
I used to be scared of wearing t-shirts, because my arms looked so horrible. I would cry, all the time. There was a period of two weeks when school had started up again, where the irritation had spread all around my face, and I couldn't bear to look at anyone. I stopped looking people in the eye, really wishing to be as unnoticed as possible. I was in such an emotionally fragile place, and operated with so few hours of sleep every day, that I would start crying in the hallway sometimes, just unable to control my emotions. To everyone who supported me through this experience, really, thank you. To those who never mentioned it to my face, who didn't push me for answers, thank you.
I am a very naturally pale person. The scarring from this "disease" is evident all around my body. Lighter and darker spots cover my arms, my ankles, really any part that was really bad during the worst months. I've gotten used to looking a bit like a giraffe, but I still feel a bit of a pang in my chest when I see pictures of people with completely smooth arms and then look at my own splotchy body. The marks don't bother me in any other way except aesthetically, and I'm still afraid that people will think my skin is ugly.
I know it sounds really odd to get a tattoo on your skin after having horrible skin problems. My skin issues had pretty much cleared up by February of this year, and I got this tattoo at the beginning of August. Its on my left forearm, a spot that hasn't suffered from any skin irritation before and was thus a "safe" place in my mind. I researched the topic, and apparently tattoos do not make atopic skin any worse as long as they're taken on a spot that is not currently inflamed, so I felt good about it.
I really did nothing to cause this skin problem. It was a combination of dry weather, sensitive skin and a tiny infection that just ended up spreading. For so long I tried to find a reason as to why I deserved this. Why I deserved this horrible thing that limited me so much. There was nothing I could do to control it besides try to get rid of the existing spots and sores. So, for me, getting this tattoo was a way for me to do something to my skin on purpose. For once, it was my decision what I wanted on my skin, and I had full control of it. It reminds me not only of home and friends but also of the experience of having absolutely no control over what was happening to me, and now, I have finally gained control again.
This was a long piece but I can't apologize for that. I don't know why this feels like a natural time to share this part of my life, but here it is. I still consider my last year of school to be the best, even if half of it was spent in a very difficult place in my mind. Again, thank you to my friends and my family, many of you kept telling me I was not disgusting and that I was still worthy of your friendship and for that I thank you.
- Becks
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