Health Update – Dermatitis
After seeing five doctors over the last two and a half months I’ve finally been diagnosed. They say I have dermatitis. According to the online Merck Medical Manual, “Dermatitis (eczema) is an inflammation of the upper layers of the skin, causing itching, blisters, redness, swelling, and often oozing, scabbing, and scaling.” In other words, I have red itchy bumps.
I’m torn between feeling glad I don’t have a hideous disease and angry at the vague diagnosis. Actually, if truth be told I am very angry about the situation. I’m trying to look on the bright side and be glad that I don’t have Lyme Disease, Lupus or any of the other horrors I read about on the Internet. I’m not there yet. I’m stuck in sarcastic mode. “I have red itchy bumps from an undisclosed origin? Really? Over the last ten weeks that thought NEVER occurred to me!”
Currently I don’t have any outbreaks and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’m done with whatever this was.
where are your itchy bumps and does anything in particular trigger them that you have noticed?
The bumps were all over. They were as low as my under knees and as high as my neck. A lot of them were in places where my clothing rubbed against my skin. So there were a bunch around my waist, under my bra, where my shirt sleeves ended and so on.
They did tend to come out at in the evening which is why some of my doctors thought that they were bed bug bites. But my exterminator (one of the most solid information sources in this whole fiasco) told me that allergy-like outbreaks tend to come out in the evening. He said it’s related to your metabolism slowing down and relaxing. He also said we did NOT have any bugs.
My second source of good information during this time was the woman who zoned me. Zoning is like reflexology. The practitioner told me it was just my lymph system clearing out some impurities. I thought about it and decided that I would drink a lot of water. If she was right that would help. If she was wrong it wouldn’t hurt. After a few weeks of increased water intake my skin has never looked better and my outbreaks have almost vanished.
BTW – I asked for a copy of my test results. I wasn’t even diagnosed with dermatitis. The report said it wasn’t this and it wasn’t that but it looked a lot like dermatitis. In other words the doctors don’t really know what happened. Interestingly enough on one of my last appointments I asked them if it could be my lymph system clearing out impurities. (This is what the Zone practitioner suggested.) The doctor paused and said, “You know, it might be related to that.”
I hope to write more about my experience with zoning later.
Marsha