Progress, part I: The middle of the story, since I don't even remember when it started getting bad.

Until I tried to remember how long this eczema has been a problem to keep friends and family up to date, I didn't realise how my sporadic complaining here serves fairly important documentation purposes. While I know I still can't be bothered to write about everything from day to day, I will make more of an effort to log my condition more regularly so I don't have to recall everything then get intimidated by the volume of words/abridge until it's essentially useless.

I don't quite remember what sort of condition I was in since last entry. But it has been a few days and the post has become huge, so I'm going to post in parts, as I get them done. The notes for the last three days (including today) is already done, but I'm going to post my logs in order and dated with the correct day.

13 June 2011 - Chinatown

Went to see a what an Eastern medicine doctor makes of my hands, since I've been itching and it has been getting worse with both antifungal medication and glucosteriods before that. The blisters has grown huge--about 0.5cm on average-- and covering about 2/3 of my fingers and about 1/4 of my palm, hands swollen to the point that I have trouble doing much, including holding a fork to eat. I have been leaky every night and have trouble sleeping. Have trouble curling my palms because of the blister that's growing on the right webbing.

I also have had some small bubbles (blisters) on my toes since the beginning, which was what got me thinking it might be an infection of a fungal nature

This degree of swelling made everything difficult, something I don't emphasize enough but is incredibly debilitating, mentally and physically. I had to fight the scratching reflex day and night, which made doing anything requiring thinking almost impossible. I was complain-y irritable at best and quite depressed and hopeless at times, and always disgusted at my hands. I still don't think my feelings at the time is unjustified--if looking at pictures of bad eczema makes you feel disgusted, try imagining seeing your own hands in that state, always in view, and looking like they are about to rot off. I became completely obsessed and preoccupied with them.I could spend hours at a time looking at my hands and peeling the flaking skin off. I was miserable because I really couldn't do jack shit. I couldn't draw or woodwork. Going out the door was problematic because my hands looked so gross. I loved using my hands to do stuff. Taking their ability to even type was devastating.

Physically, I had problems taking care of myself on a basic level. Teeth brushing, showering, changing, pulling on pants, pulling off pants, eating, getting onto bed...all of them risk breaking the blisters and cause my hand to swell and leak and itch badly afterwards. All I could do was to sit and read online--it took the least amount of movement and contact, but provided the entertainment needed to keep me distracted enough to forget about my hands. I drowned myself in fandom.

The doctor didn't really know what's up exactly, prescribed two days' worth of soak that smells like flowers and "cool"-type medicine for "wet-poison". The cat liked one ingredient of the soak--turns out it's in the same family as catmint. The medicine tasted like flower tea. Couldn't tell me whether it's fungal or eczema.

Wasn't sure what's supposed to happen after soaking and taking the medicine and the soaking stung a little, so after two days with no improvement but increased redness in the affected areas (Left: little, ring, inner wrist; Right: little, ring, webbing on back), we decided going out to Chinatown again would be super helpful.