Psoriasis

Since I was a child, I have suffered from psoriasis. It’s a skin condition, and it means that sometimes, parts of my skin grow about four times faster than normal skin. The new skin doesn’t have time to be worn away naturally like normal skin does, and this results in itchy skin patches which are red and scaly. In my case I have guttate psoriasis, meaning I get the condition in lots of small patches, though sometimes my patches join together into larger areas.

As a child and teenager, I was particularly badly affected by psoriasis. It covered a very large proportion of my body, including my face and scalp. I spent many weeks in hospital trying to get it under control, to little positive response. I did get relentlessly bullied because of it, mostly name calling (pizza face, flakybake, dandruff boy – you get the idea!), and spent years avoiding PE lessons so I wouldn’t have to get changed.

As an adult, it has come and gone, and I’ve been lucky enough for most of my 30s to be almost free of it, just retaining a little on my scalp and elbows. It often has a small resurgence in the winter, but clears up when I can get into some sunshine in the summer. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened this year, and it has returned with a vengeance, and I’m in a particularly bad breakout right now. It’s probably caused by the stress of the last 18 months or so with the bad university course, unemployment and new job taking their toll.

So for all those people I overhear talking about my ‘terrible dandruff’, or think I’m dirty because I appear to scratch a lot… give me a break, if I could do anything about it, I would!