Month 10 update

Hello! By the time you see this, I will be on a plane to Australia!! Crazy! I will let you know how the plane affects me.

Month ten has been disappointing for me. I steadily got worse on the whole. Day to day conditions fluctuated, one day I was a bit better, next not as much, but in the whole not much improvement. Attempting to follow normal sleep cycle, sleeping with another body on a twin bed who is very bad at sleeping affected my ability to sleep as well. The last couple months of above was really detrimental to my ability to sleep. I can count on my hands the number of times I felt like I got good sleep. Considering how well I was doing with sleep before, I think I should probably go back to what I was doing. I’m sure lack of sleep doesn’t help with healing.

Another thing I think may affect my ability to heal is my expectations. I feel pressured, both by others and by myself, to act like I’m better – I’m ten months in, after all. However, upon looking back on my posts, I’m doing as well as month 5 or so. I’ll probably start lightly exercising regularly once I’m at Australia in hopes I’ll feel better and more energized. If you are going through topical steroid withdrawal while working (both in and out of house) full time, you deserve ALL THE PRAISES! I don’t know how you do it. Humans are strong creatures indeed.

I am really dry on my face and my neck. I oozed a little bit on my face and neck. Last few days I was careless and I ate whatever – gluten, dairy, sugar, msg, etc- and my skin was also worse. I think it’s correlated but we will know for sure once I go on really strict autoimmune protocol diet come October.

I started to take cod liver oil, l- glutamine and probiotic, but stopped after few days because I felt like I was doing worse. I will probably resume once I’m at Australia and things settle down. I know everybody says how awesome Sun is supposed to be, but for me the heat makes me inflamed and irritated. My skin- especially face and neck region- have been radiating heat again. Not as bad as first few months, but combined with southern California weather, I had to resort to ice packs here and there. I think Australian winter will help me feel better, as cold always did.

Pictures are from today, 6/23/14 right after a shower so I’m extra dry looking and inflamed.

Edit: 6/25
I arrived at Melbourne!! Airplane messed with my skin big time! I wasn’t necessarily extra itchy but I was super super dry.

6/27 – last two days I’ve been shedding a lot, especially my face and neck but now my skin looks much better! I had about hour or two of minor flares in which I was burning a bit and was red but that subsided. Now skin looks better than before airplane! Pictures coming soon. My skin really likes the cold! It combats the burn big time.