My Top 4 Worst Experiences with Eczema in Public

Frankly, sometimes I just don’t deal with my eczema when it’s really severe in public. The pandemic and working remotely has made that a lot easier for a lot of people.

Sometimes though (often?) you do have to leave your house. Somethings this is when you’d rather just stay home during a severe, scary flare.

Here are some things I’ve started to become aware of when I am in public, thanks to my severe eczema.

1. Skin Shedding Related Experiences

Eczema is an exfoliative disease. This means people with eczema shed many (many, many, many) more skin cells in a day than the average person. In the privacy of my own home, this means brushing off nearly a full handful’s worth of dead skin from my sheets every morning. It means sweeping, vacuuming, and dusting very often. In public, this means trying to slyly brush off my chair every time I get up from a seat in a conference room, at a restaurant, etc. It’s always covered in skin, even if I feel like I didn’t itch. If I did itch, I normally have to very casually sit up off the chair ever so slightly and really brush the skin off before I get up. Otherwise, it would literally look like I ate several powdered donuts, covered in coconut flakes or something like that. So gross.

Life’s good when the carpet in a space is light colored. When it’s dark colored, brushing the skin off the chair just transfers that powdered-donut-mess-look (i.e., a pile of dead skin) to the floor.

The next step is to just hope no one notices. Places that often have dark carpet (and dark seats) include meeting rooms and airplanes, FYI. You can really always tell where I’ve been because I seem to leave a trail of skin behind. I should never commit a crime; my DNA’s everywhere.

My skin’s shedding from eczema is also very obvious when I take off jackets in public. It truly looks like I’m inside a snow globe when I take off my jacket. This is especially the case if I’ve been wearing it for a while. I’ve usually scratched over the fabric in a feeble attempt to reach the skin underneath (which is basically always). I never do this jacket removal in a sunny spot. That really accentuates the snow globe effect, and it’s mortifying.

2. Interacting with Humans in Public, With Eczema

Obviously, when I’m out in public, I’m normally interacting with other humans. This is normally at work (pretty much everything else, like grocery shopping, etc. can be done online now. I also don’t really care what people think of me in the grocery store).

Frankly, probably the worst part of being at work with severe eczema is when people ask me if I’m OK. Really, I should consider this kind and sweet. But in actuality, I’m trying so hard to have a normal day that it’s a slap in the face. I’ve maybe even put on a little makeup (contrary to my patch testing’s recommendation). This is my sad attempt to try to cover the bright red patches (obviously this doesn’t work for super flaky patches), even though I know this will make me break out later. I’m just hoping no one notices, but of course they do.

I’ve been asked if I’m having an allergic reaction before by a colleague. It would be pretty scary if allergic reactions actually lasted years like my eczema has lasted for years. I think he knew this wasn’t the case and just wanted to know what was up.

While I appreciate the sentiment, don’t you think I’d know if I was having an allergic reaction? Especially if I was having one all day, every day? Unfortunately, sometimes my face is just permanently swollen, flaky, red, and off-putting, and there’s nothing I can do about. But that’s confusing for people not familiar with severe eczema. Heck, it’s confusing to me, too. That shouldn’t happen to a normally functioning body.

When I’m asked this I normally just laugh a bit and say something like “Ha! Yea! I’m clearly allergic to something, I just don’t know what it is! Ha!” I do wish that were the case. At least Benadryl would help, then.

3. Eczema and Travel

Probably the worst interaction I’ve had with the outside world on a particularly eczema-filled day, though, was when I was lucky enough to be traveling this past May. It was about two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was in an adorable little town and walked into a gift shop sort of place to look at some earrings.

The place also (I later learned) sold boutique-y personal care products. I walked into the store and started looking around. Nearly immediately, the store’s proprietor came up to me and started spraying the itchy, bright red, inflamed eczema on my arms with lavendar-scented hand sanitizer! If you’ve ever put hand sanitizer in a paper cut or similar, you can probably imagine how uncomfortable it was to have it surprise-sprayed on my open eczema wounds.

I didn’t cry. But man did I want to, mostly because I was so mortified that I looked so repulsive to this shop owner that she felt she had to sanitize me before she could sell me anything.

Similarly, while crossing a border into Canada earlier this year via car, the border agent asked me “What’s all over your hands?”. They were on full display because I was driving and (obviously, or not so obviously?) gripping the steering wheel with my hands. In his defense, we were and are still in pandemic mode. I understand the heightened awareness from a border guard around communicable disease, but it certainly didn’t make me feel good.

4. Eczema and Other Social Situations

I’m also incredibly wary of shaking anyone’s hands in the middle of a flare (which again, is all the time for me). In my head, the other person will feel as if they are shaking hands with sandpaper. They’ll wonder what all the open sores on my hands and arms are. I would too. I’m not sure what they actually think, but I almost always feel the need to explain myself.

Relatedly, I’ve skipped a number of social situations involving short sleeves (mainly formal events) and when I do go, I’ve worn a full length dress and kept my jacket on, even if it was warm in the venue, to avoid showing anyone my scabbed and scary-looking arms.

I sometimes skip social situations because I just feel so particularly ugly. I haven’t really worn makeup in over a year, and I generally just feel less confident than normal, particularly in settings where everyone else has spent significant time on their appearance, like at weddings or other social events.

One of the handfuls of times I did wear makeup over the past year, someone said: “Wow you look like a movie star!” which was kind but also made me feel as if day to day my appearance was plain and lacking.

Here’s to looking like a movie star in public *every day* when I’m passed this eczema era.

Happy Scratching.