Back in the summer I had a flare up of eczema . I’ve had persistent little dry spots appear before on my skin, primarily on my hands but also on my feet and arms. This time, it was different. By the fall, the dry patch was still there and growing ever larger. It had spread so that several fingers on both hands were afflicted. Ew! It wasn’t so horrible, but it was annoying: occasionally itchy and ugly, with a texture and look that changed in seemingly random ways. Yuck.
Knowing that western medicine had always failed to solve my eczema, and wanting to try a different approach, I went to a Chinese herbal medicine clinic. I’d been hearing about traditional Chinese medicine regularly for the past year, because a friend of mine is studying acupuncture. Her school, the Shiatsu School of Canada, offers inexpensive student consultations, and that’s where I headed. This was around the same time that I’d decided to take much greater action than I had been on the job/career front. Really, I guess, I’d decided to take greater action in general.
The treatment was fascinating to me, and I did experience changes as I drank the prescribed teas. (Ouff, they were not delicious.) After several weeks, though, I felt like I wanted to take matters more into my own hands. I researched my problem online and bought a bunch of different creams and soaps. From then on, I moisturized each time I washed my hands. It was annoying, but I believed it would work. And it did, and soon the tiniest spots disappeared and no new ones formed. It was slow going, but there was improvement.
The eczema persisted into this year. Now we’re at the end of February and guess what? It’s all gone. And I’ve even been pretty bad about applying cream regularly. My hands are back to normal. Success!
I can’t say for sure why my skin’s all healed up. I believe my problem may have been stress all along. We know stress does terrible things to our bodies and our minds, and affects each person differently. Maybe eczema is one of the physical signs that I’m not doing well. And now that I’m feeling psychologically much, much better, the eczema got the message: scram!
