After having a massive problem with my skin (see images below), I decided to try and give my body it’s best chance at recovering and I went on a leaky gut diet. My digestion has never been good and I figured I had nothing to lose. This blog post will cover a bit about my skin saga only, it was too much information to keep them together as promised. Read my post about the leaky gut diet here (once it’s live, it may be a bit but the link will work eventually lol): Giving the Leaky gut diet a try

Around Oct 6 (almost 2 months ago) I got bit on my hand by some Buffalo gnats. Simple nuisance flies. Not quite as big as a house fly but with an itchy bite. I am a scratcher… love to scratch, pick etc at my skin. When I get a sunburn I would peel it off whenever possible. This was the number one thing I did wrong in all of this. If you have hives…. don’t scratch! Spread, spread, spread and, well. Here’s a timeline and then some dated pics.

The first evidence of a problem was these little wheals on my right hand.  A week later, the wheals had hardened and I got a bloom up my left arm and a few other wheals showed up.

I tried to deal with it myself, primarily by scratching it off of course, and also using coconut oil on it and everything went into overdrive. My forearms started swelling like Popeye.

I went to urgent care, looking a bit like a burn victim and got a six day course of prednisone. “It’ll be gone tomorrow,” he tells me. I go to fill the prednisone… pharmacy assistant says this happened to her out of nowhere on a flight the day before she got married. She took the prednisone, gone the next day. For me,  on the 6th day it was pretty much gone. Then, I finished the medicine and it came right back again. This time I tried calamine lotion and it all fused to my skin.

It was so scary looking lol, so painful. Hot, tender, itchy, burning. The epsom baths made me way worse. All of the baths I took throughout this ordeal made it worse. I’ve always had problems with getting my skin wet. It ‘shrinks’ up and aches, but this was just ugh.

The second time it came back, after I finished the 6 day prednisone, with a vengeance. I figured I needed a real diagnostician so I saw a dermapathologist, where they gave me a shot of cortisone that seemed to do nothing and  scheduled a biopsy for two weeks. Meanwhile, the skin raged on. After the first week it hit my face. I called the doc and they got me in early for the biopsy, sent out a swab from one of the eruptions to see if anything came back and gave me 30mg/day of prednisone. No other tests.

The culture grew MRSA and pseudomonas. Interestingly enough, I had suffered a pseudomonas abundance after my Xyrem debacle and it was coincidentally six years ago the same week. They gave me an antibiotic and I scheduled an appointment with an infectious disease specialist at a UCLA satellite office.

Well, the infectious disease specialist laughed about me being on antibiotics for the lab results he was looking at of mine. He said there was no way it was MRSA causing all this and if it was I’d be in the hospital. But, he also, had no idea what it was.

In an interesting turn of events, I actually found a doctor who was curious. It’s been decades since I found that doc that found it so interesting they really wanted to help you figure out what it was. I found the whole experience of a visible illness vs an invisible illness to be quite interesting and plan to write about it down the road. He, like the other three doctors, had no idea what’s going on with my skin but we were both happy it had calmed down quite a bit. Fortunately I had all the pictures.

He ran some blood tests and said I need to see an allergist.  I’m scheduled for the 17th.

At this point – all my tests are normal other than those elevated by the prednisone. The biopsy is normal, they are still waiting for results from the piece they sent to UCLA. I have weaned down to 10mg prednisone and will go to 5mg tomorrow. I’m having a tooth filled today (I read abscesses can cause hives so getting that nipped off my to do list).

The Journey in pics

Right now my calves are still super plasticky dry with a lot of discoloration and some hivey looking spots. I’m getting a lot of relief from my new Shea Butter (see below for link to purchase). My hands still thicken up and pinken every now and again. I have no idea what is going on.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a Leaky Gut Diet, as I mentioned, I’ll have a post about that HERE eventually. If the link isn’t live, I haven’t finished the post yet. It’s a lot to go over.

Thanks for checking this out. If you’ve had issues like this, feel free to share your experience in the comments. This is a secure site now, you just need to make sure the URL bar has the https:// at the beginning to get the lock.

Please share this post with anyone you know having big time skin issues like this one. There’s something really wonderful about the hive mind (pun intended) coming together to connect experiences and try to find solutions.

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Take a look at my RECOMMENDED PRODUCT! Click on the image below to go to Amazon to see this AMAZING Shea butter. ONE ingredient, that’s it and it’s delicious… just don’t eat it! lol When you use this link to purchase this product, I am compensated but you do not pay any additional. It’s a great way to support this site without spending any money, well, on the site lol. THANKS!!!