At War With My Skin
I spent the majority of my childhood underwater.
“I can hold my breath for an hour,” I told my childhood friends. I never needed goggles because I could swim with my eyes wide open. I would wade as much as possible into the shoreline, grabbing fistfuls of sand and letting tiny crabs walk all over me. I could sleep on the beach with a bathing suit full of sand and that sticky feeling salt water leaves on your skin, and I rarely wore sunscreen.
I’ve suffered from an incurable disease my entire life. When I was a baby, doctors said it was a diaper rash, which meant I got to go without a diaper for most of babyhood. The NSFW photos are hilarious.
The diaper era passed, but the rash didn’t. So my doctor prescribed cortisone to treat the red flared spots on my skin. Its application became a nightly event: after dinner, I’d lay bottomless on my stomach on my mom’s lap and watch Funniest Home Videos while she rubbed cortisone all over me. This was the 80s, so no one had any idea of the long-term effects that much cortisone could cause. Cut to me at 13, 100 lbs. and covered in stretch marks. It turned out that cortisone strips your skin of its elasticity, and my growing body wasn’t adjusting so well.
I was about 10-years-old when I first heard the word “psoriasis.” The doctor wasn’t even that familiar with it, but he told us that’s what he’d put his money on. His prescription: hit the beach and get some sun. But not too much sun, because a sunburn would irritate the spots and make it worse.
So we went almost every weekend to the beach in Oahu, Hawaii. [Did I mention I grew up in Hawaii?] I remember the beach as much a part of my childhood as my own family. I was good at the beach. The sores started clearing up and I started to feel normal.
Then we moved to North Carolina.
I was 13-years-old, scattered with stretch marks. Winter comes, and the sores return. But this time with a vengeance — in my hairline, cuticles and lower back. On the inside, I was a firecracker, a blossoming socialite with big dreams. On the outside, I felt like a leper. Junior high can be a cruel, cruel place. Kids are afraid of what they don’t know, and I was a ball of sexual tension and puberty. I was confused by my desire to hump every boy I came into contact with, but also to hide in seclusion like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. A half a dozen penny-sized plaques formed across my back and on my scalp. My skin was flawed in a world where perfect photoshopped skin was the goal.
I was hip to what was cool; I read Seventeen and the occasional Cosmopolitan. I knew what was considered “beautiful.” I grew resentful that I would never look like that. I tried so hard to accept my fate, but I wanted so much more out of my life than to hide. I put a lot of limitations on myself, and I sometimes let it get the best of me.
During my senior year of high school, I accompanied the hottest guy in school to the Military Ball. I was not going to be caught dead in a gown that covered my shoulders, so I put glittery temporary tattoos across my back with extra glitter to distract from the constellation of spots. Nobody seemed to notice but me.
After a while, I got angry. Out of spite, I would sit out in the heat with no sunscreen and burn. Believe it or not, it cleared up a little! I lost the pigment, but I didn’t have a nasty scab. Did we just come to a truce, me and this body of mine, that I have been in constant conflict with? That I have felt estranged from, mad at and resentful towards? This resent caused me to buy clothes with stipulations. It would have to cover my back. It couldn’t be black so I wouldn’t flake on it. And with the weight I’ve put on, it couldn’t be too form-fitting.
As punishment for burning in the sun, I got a plaque on my shin the size of a tennis ball. I guessed that now I couldn’t wear shorts. I tried covering it up with makeup, Vitamin E, Emu oil, and finally Selsun Blue. The Selsun Blue caused a burn so harsh that the plaque doubled in size. You bitch. Feeling defeated, I gave up. I accepted that my fate was to never show my legs to the world again.
At 27, I decided to go back to college and shift my career in a different direction. It was a fresh start, so I decided to start a war with my Psoriasis. I was in the best shape of my life and the only thing standing in the way between perfect happiness and myself was this stupid fucking disease. I started taking Humira. I had incredible insurance then, so this medicine only cost me about $20 a month. I could only take it for a few months at a time because of the damage it caused to my liver. I didn’t see results that were worth the trouble, so I stopped after a year.
Would you believe that what eventually cleared the goddamned Psoriasis on my shin after 15 years?
HBO’s The Night Of and saran wrap.
John Turturro’s character had eczema, if I’m not mistaken, and he would oil his feet and wrap them in saran wrap. Curious, I put my topical medicine on as usual, and wrapped my leg up too. The next morning felt like a miracle. I peeled off the plastic and felt a small tinge of cold air on my leg; I could feel the scab peeling off like a bad sunburn. It was too good to be true. I let my leg dry for the day, but it was clear that it was significantly better, almost smooth. I did it again that night; I even wrapped my breast because I was starting to get Psoriasis under my boob. I debated wrapping my scalp, but I thought that was enough for one night. My boyfriend would think I was proposing the Dexter role-play again.
By the next morning, it was almost completely gone! I was so excited and so annoyed I didn’t do this sooner. Eight months later, it’s still gone, and so is the pigment. Even the spot that had haunted me for 15 years was gone.
I’m not fully free of the effects of Psoriasis, but I now have a way to attack plaque flare-ups, so I feel like I have some control back. There is still a long way to go towards feeling completely happy in my body. But as I get older, I have the fortune of getting smarter, more mature and hopeful that maybe there will be a cure in my lifetime. Until then, I can share my story and hope to hear others as well.
