Day 60 – Hard Floors

Roll into bed 2:30am last night after a (very pleasant) night on the beers hanging out with my brother and sister after what feels like an eternity.

So alcohol level high, I ate late, fast, and with cheese, my skin had rather dried out over the day, and I was sleeping in a new place – all normally triggers.

No scratching at night. A scratch free night. It was almost impossible in the last few nights at home…but here…scratch free…why?? What is going ON?

Possible reasons:

1) Hard floors – my brother’s new apartment has hard floors and is rather un-dusty. The sofa I was sleeping on was plastic leather…which is rather un-dusty…and my duvet was a nice material…I think cotton, maybe.

2) (Boring) My use of steroids yesterday morning. Although, and I’ll keep saying it, I am only using the weakest form of steroid I’ve been prescribed (Hydrocortisone Ointment 1%), and this is against the advice of my dermatologist who said that they only recommend that one for the face. My idea that, as I’m using far weaker steroids far less often now, their effectiveness has increased substantially is again strengthened.

3) I did consciously make sure I relaxed properly before trying to sleep – I’ve noticed that many of the times I’ve scratched in the night I haven’t switched off properly before sleeping. Yesterday evening I took a good few minutes to digest all my thoughts and file them away for the morning. Maybe it worked…

4) (Unlikely) My lovely Epic Salad from Day 58 (described on Day 59) turned out to be a good idea after all…

Day 49 – Gay Pride

As I’ve done the last couple of years I went down to Gay Pride in Brighton yesterday. Not necessarily my idea of a perfect day out, but there is a super atmosphere there and it was a nice chance to catch up with my cousin who lives there.

Eczema-wise, I knew it would be chaos. Trying to find healthy food whilst rushing around following the group we were with on a long-distance pub crawl was almost impossible. I also couldn’t resist the temptation to drink, or to take (a little) marijuana as it was passed round. I’ve noted before that the first time I enter a place (getting home, entering a restaurant, getting on a train…) is always a dangerous time for potential scratching (I don’t know why, perhaps it’s to do with the disorientation of a new place putting my stress level up a bit?) and so a pub crawl would perhaps seem like it would be disastrous in this respect.

How was it? Fine. No scratching, almost none at all.

But…as always…WHY?

1 – The boring reason. I knew the day was going to be a difficult one eczema-wise and used my weakest steroid, Hydrocortisone 1%, for the first time in 5 days, as a preventative measure.

2 – Knowing about the unhealthy times to come, at about 11am I ate a plate full of steamed green vegetables and carrot. Maybe that helped.

3 – I kept my blood sugar under control. I’m now very interested in whether peaks in blood sugar are causing scratching. I dodged all the sweeter alcoholic drinks (except for one jagerbomb…ugh…) and avoided getting cokes etc.

4 – Wishful thinking perhaps, but feeling relaxed under the influence of the marijuana MAY have contributed to me being less inclined to scratch. Perhaps that’s just insane though.

5 – I left early (well, 11ish) so it wasn’t a spectacularly late night.

6 – I made sure I didn’t have to do anything early the next day – I think that worrying about having to get up early to do stuff can lead to me scratching at night.

Today with the hangover etc. I have scratched a bit, but it’s been very controllable. I’ve ate healthily  – my super breakfast recommended by Oracle, followed by an onion-spinach omelette with an avocado, rye bread, houmous, and goats cheese – which has probably helped too. And, of course, no caffeine.

Well that’s about it for yesterday. More later.