The name for the site comes from a recent conversation I had with my brother at a family wedding. He asked me what hobbies I’d been into lately. Normally I’m very into hot yoga and long, sweaty, difficult hikes, to name a few hobbies, but these things are currently painful and extremely uncomfortable with my eczema. It’s nearly impossible to sweat, or get warm, for that matter, without triggering at least an hour of scratch-till-you-bleed style scratching afterwards.
Instead, scratching is my hobby. So many of my thoughts are spent thinking about trying not to scratch and being frustrated at how itchy I am. So much of my time is spent taking oatmeal and dead sea salt baths (link coming!), trying new remedies (link coming!), and generally doing things more slowly than I used to, partially because too much movement painfully cracks my skin, quite literally, and partially because I haven’t slept well in months and feel as if I’m living my life half awake. I’m certainly half as present as I used to be.
I’m keeping the site anonymous for now because much of what I write about is frankly extremely embarrassing (link coming!) and often disgusting (links coming!). In fact, you may find some of the pictures to be graphic. No human body should shed as much skin as an eczema body. (I’ve been known to tell family that I’m currently “molting” when things are really bad). No one should have to wake up to bloody sheets from scratching through the night (or to their partner thinking he’s developed dandruff from all the skin flying around while laying in bed with an eczema-filled bed partner).
For what it’s worth and to the extent it matters, I’m a late twenties female currently living in the Pacific Northwest (though I’ve spent time with my eczema in the Midwest and Northeast as well).
In form, this is a collection of my thoughts on eczema from the past year or so, loosely grouped by topic. There are some affiliate links in here for products that have brought me a bit of eczema relief (links coming!). I’ve not found a silver bullet though, so these suggestions are just me opining on what did and didn’t work. I hope one of them is your silver bullet if you are suffering. As with any chronic disease, what works is often very much individualized, and with eczema it doesn’t help that there are so many types (wet, dry, flaky, contact, not contact, etc.).
While I sometimes mention products I hated (link coming!), I’ll never link to them from an affiliate perspective. If you do click an affiliate link and later buy something from the site, I receive a small commission. I plan to use these commissions (if any!) to fund the site and fund the $10 Vanicream ointment I’ve had to “refill” every week or more (among other lotions and things). In fact, if this site could have an inanimate mascot, it would probably be this (an empty tube of Vanicream ointment):
Many of the links on the site are Amazon links. While I dislike the environmental impacts of Amazon’s shipping methods, I have become a frequent Amazon Prime customer because I’ve found that often I’m at the end of a tube or bottle of lotion (see above…) and desperately need another and my local stores don’t have anything in stock (at least not anything that won’t make me itch, incessantly – link coming!). I figure you’re probably in the same boat if you’re reading this, so yes, the links are all to Amazon Prime products. If you can find products that work for you at your local stores, more power to you!