Itchy, Scratchy, Socially Unacceptable

So, as I’ve referenced in the past, I have psoriasis.  It’s this skin disease like eczema, except it’s called psoriasis, and it’s, like, a totally different disease.  In both diseases, there are red splotches all over the affected human.  Or is it effected?  I always mess that up.  Affected.  I think it’s affected.  Anywhoo.  Psoriasis is an INTERNAL problem – my immune system (and the immune systems of my fellow flakers) is hyper and totally opposed to all this perfectly good skin that covers me.  It freaks out and goes, “Holy crap!  What’s all that skin doing there?  That’s not good skin!  That’s bad, bad, bad, super bad skin!  We need to grow NEW skin on top of that bad skin because we’ve had, like, seven hundred thousand immune system lattes and we are totally buzzed!”  Or something like that.

With eczema, the red badness is usually caused by some environmental factor.  Like laundry detergent, fabric, allergens in the air, etc.  The reason that I decided to blog about this is because the subject is coming up a lot lately.  Mainly because I’m simply COVERED in red flaky scales and it’s pretty creepy looking.  So some people, instead of just giving me the stink eye and not touching things I’ve touched, simply ask me what’s up.  Some of them say, “What did you get into?” because at first glance it can look at lot like poison ivy/oak/sumac and that stuff is contagious and itchy, while psoriasis is not.  Contagious, that is.  It’s itchy sometimes.

my arm, simply covered with psoriasis!  fun!
yep. that's my arm.

In Macy’s shoe department the other day, a lady approached me and fired question after question at me, because her daughter has eczema and she wanted to know if that was what I had.  I explained the difference, and told her that there were lots of treatment options for eczema, and that lots of times kids just grow out of it.  Her daughter is 5.  She just basically wanted to make sure her daughter didn’t turn out like me, which I guess is understandable.  It was a really long, repetitive, frustrating conversations, but I didn’t want to give all psoriatics a bad name by being rude, or smacking her in the head with a display Coach tennis shoe ($90 for tennis shoes, really?) so I calmly and politely answered every question she asked.  Even the ones she asked several times.  Saint Mary Psoriasis.  That’s me.

I then calmly told my mom I had to go home.  Because, heck.  I don’t mind answering questions. I  would MUCH rather someone ask me questions than treat me like a leper, but it got a little ridonkulous.

So anyway, I’m not taking the “magic drug” they had me on, because it makes me uninsurable, and it has a 1/200,000 chance of giving you lymphoma, so junk is flared up like whoa.  I’m trying to think of ways to market this inconvenience, but nothing seems really very good or sanitary, for that matter.  I could print up little fact cards and laminate them and sell them to other people who have the disease so that we could all keep them in a little case like a business card case and whenever anyone asks, (or looks at you funny, for that matter) we could just hand them the card, with some fun facts about famous people who had/have psoriasis (Leann Rimes, what?) and maybe a phone number to call for more information.  Hey.  That’s actually a pretty good idea.  Dibs!  That’s my idea!  Don’t steal it, you psoriasis-informational card-stealing people.

So yeah.  That’s a post about that, to distract myself from this crappy sinus infection that I also have.  Cheers!  Time for another soak in Dead Sea salts whilst chugging water and chanting OM.  PEACE.

2 thoughts on “Itchy, Scratchy, Socially Unacceptable”

  1. If any spots look like baby Jesus or his mama then cha f’in ching! Thanks for sharing, and for the record, I’ve always considered you one of the most attractive people I know inside and out and still would with our without your beauty marks or if you gained 100 lbs…except as I told you years ago…if you were badly burned in a fire or something cuz that’s just kinda gross.

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