The Simple Life
My life is not simple. My life is not easy and here comes this allergy adding to my grief. I’ve always been poor. So why is this allergy here to ruin my life? Most doctors would and do not recognize the words ‘Metal Allergy’. They recognize elements and by metal being a nonbiologic element the allergy seems a little unreal. However, it is real for me. Month by month my skin progressed to get worse. I’d schedule appointment after appointment in the department of Dermatology on the 6th floor of the Crile Building A at Cleveland Clinic with no avails to a solution nor a cure.

Each appointment, I’d get nearly nude for the doctors to examine the dark, scaly, itchy, disgusting patches which were taking over my body. The only hypothesized diagnosis was ECZEMA. Really eczema? I’ve never had eczema. Why is this happening to me? Each time no more a diagnosis than the time before. I was deteriorating, decaying from the outside.

Everywhere I’d go I would be embarrassed to have these skin flakes falling from my body. I altered my food choices, clothing attire fabric and design choices, hair, nails and toes too! Nope no more spa days for me (not that I ever had one, but it was nice to have the option), now the option is even gone. It is the most uncomfortable feeling in the world! The feeling of your body wanting to escape your skin but neither can expel the other as you are bound for eternity. It is your body and you have to treat it well, this was the valuable lesson: Do Not Take Your ‘Good’ Health For Granted. Here I am completely healthy but unhealthy in the same body.

My vitals always come back calm as a cucumber. My blood pressure typically 110/60, heartbeat good, ear, nose and throat only affected by the all season allergy. My skin had become my hidden shame. Only my closest friends (and my mother) knew my pain only as I describe it and showed them my scars. My friends would watch me tear up from wanting to scratch and not able to for fear of drawing blood. After a point I drew my own blood nightly from the itching pain.

Every medicine I was prescribed, failed. They tried giving me Triamcinolone a topical corticosteroid for severe skin rashes. This medication is typically prescribed to infants for diaper rash. My skin was now that of my infant state; I have now reached a point of life and death in the same body. My skin was decaying, deteriorating, I was literally becoming ash to ash and dust to dust with piles of skin flakes falling off daily. It was to a point where I did not recognize my own body, face, skin. Unfortunately, I never photographed all of the flakes and scares which would come off of my skin in my attempt at sleep each evening.

My only medicinal salvation was benadryl. I popped them both name brands and generics like candy minimum 3-5per day my max was 8 pills per day. After taking 8 benadryl (which one would put an average person to sleep for at least 4-6hours) no longer had an affect on my sleep patterns. My REM cycle was not bothered by the massive quantity of allergic medicine.

Here was my typical allergy pill day:
Wake (2-4Benadryl + 2Claritin/Loratidine)
Lunch(1-2 Benadryl + 1Claritin)
Dinner/Home (2-4 Benadryl +1-2Claritin)

All of this was to try to control my itching, the insane insatiable uncontrollable itching. I’d lay awake so desperately wanting to sleep. I could not sleep, I could not sit still, I could not lay down with being in pain from the dry patches of skin with nothing helping or giving me a reprieve. Nothing over the counter helped, nothing prescribed would help, nothing, nothing, nohting would help but I was steadily getting worse. My skin began to suffer from HYPERPIGMENTATION.
HYPERPIGMENTATION: THE DARKENING OF SKIN PIGMENTATION the opposite of Vitiligo which is the loss of skin pigmentation. I was now a shadow of myself.