Living with Eczema

 Our experience of chronic atopic eczema began with our four month old son. He was our third child at that stage we believed we could cope with any problem a baby could bring. How wrong we were. This condition is totally invasive and relentless. For the sufferer, our son, it brought endless pain and frustration. For us his carers, it brought  a deep sense of failure and helplessness and to top it all off it was expensive. Not only were the treatment of his condition costly in terms of money but it also cost us sleep, time and very nearly our sanity.

Up until he was four months of age our child seemed like a perfectly normal healthy baby. But then he seemed to change overnight. He went from being a placid happy baby to one who screamed most of the day and night and would not be comforted no matter how hard we tried. He wanted to be carried all the time and would not be put down for any reason. Furthermore, he woke constantly during the night when he had previously been sleeping through.

But the first I knew we had a serious problem was one morning when I went to get him up and I was horrified to find him covered in scratches and blood all over his bedding. To combat this problem of him scratching himself at night, after trying many things without much success, we ultimately had to resort to putting splints on his arms so he couldn’t bend them . His scratching was also a problem during the day but it was easier to monitor.  For these times we taped mittens onto his hands to try and prevent him causing further injury to himself. Without the tape, he was like Houdini, he could get those mittens off in seconds, even with the tape they didn’t last long. This did however lead to an interesting phenomenon. As his hands were out of action most of the time, he became adept at using his feet to hold things. 

Our daily routine, just to keep the chronic condition under control, consisted of applying moisturiser all over his body, including his head seven times a day. In the morning this was followed by cortisone cream applied to the affected areas, which was most of his body. Next we wrapped his arms and legs in wet dressings soaked in an oil and water solution, which we then covered with crepe bandages. We also soaked his singlet in the oil solution and wrapped his torso in crepe bandages. Lastly we soaked a cotton hat for his head and dressed him. In the evening we would bath him in a lukewarm bath with more oil, and repeat the morning bandaging routine. Then we’d put him in his splints. It was heartbreaking to see him like that and to watch him squirm when lying on his back trying to relieve the itch, he was never still. When he finally went to bed at night, there was still bandages to roll for the next day.  The bandages had to be washed after each use to minimise the risk of infection, as did his clothes. The dressings were only used once and then discarded.

So to say that eczema  became our whole life is not an exaggeration. Every waking moment was filled with treating our son’s condition and trying to keep it under control. It was a soul destroying, daily routine.  On top of this was the constant worry about infection, the effect of the amount of cortisone we were using on him, his development, which virtually stalled once the eczema flared up and the money it was costing us to keep the condition under control.

However all the things we went through were of little consequence when compared to the pain he endured.  I cannot begin to imagine what it was like for him, not free for a moment from the incessant  itch. There were times when we could not see a clear patch of skin on his entire body so he would have been itchy from head to foot. 

In an effort to find out what was causing his eczema we were referred to an allergist for testing. It took several months to get an appointment and the outcome was not much help.  He was allergic to many things, including egg and peanuts but the one that was most likely causing the eczema was his allergy to dustmite.  However we were told it is impossible to eliminate dustmite completely. We could only reduce it. So now we had the likely cause of the condition and still could do little to alleviate it. 

We were lucky though. His condition improved and to this day remains under control. However the battle to achieve this was not easily won. It put an unbearable strain on our resources of time, energy, money and endurance to say nothing of the pain it caused our son and us his carers who had to watch it. However we did survive and came out of it stronger people.