Who told you you have psoriasis?

After months of horrible aggravation with a primary care doctor misdiagnosing me with rashes, allergic reaction, etc. I finally went to a dermatologist to find out what was going on with my legs. My legs looked awful and felt terrible (itching NONSTOP and when I say itching worse than a bug bite or poison ivy). It had gotten to the point I didn't want legs any more. If I had gotten in a wreck and had to have my legs amputated I would have been happy to be rid of them.

The dermatologist walks in, sits down on a stool in front of me, looks over my legs, looks at me and says, "You've got psoriasis". Simple as that! I was shocked. That after what I had been through this man diagnosed me with in seconds. I was so excited to finally know what was wrong. However I knew what the psoriasis diagnosis meant. FOREVER. He then said, "Now I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that psoriasis is not curable. It's very rare for psoriasis to go away. Most people have it forever. But the good news is that it is treatable. With the right medicine you can control it and won't even be able to see in on your legs." So I was crushed at the knowledge of having this forever but slightly comforted by the thought that I can use medicine to stop the itching and make my legs look normal again. I started using medicine called Vanos. It's a corticosteroid cream.

Now if you don't know anything about corticosteroid creams let me share a little piece of information. With long term use they can cause your skin to thin. Yes, THIN. Now obviously having your skin thin is not a good thing. I knew of the side effect and went on my merry way. After several years I developed two scars on my thighs, one on each leg, that looked very similar to stretch marks. I'm not talking about the tiny little bitty white lines you get on your hips when you have a growth spurt. I am talking about large purple scars like a morbidly obese person would have stretching across their ginormous belly! I showed them to my doctor thinking they were a concern and thinning of my skin from the long term use of my medicine. He brushed off this concern though and said it was merely caused from "life". I kid you not that it what he said. Now let me tell you a little about my physicality. At the age of 27 years old I currently weigh the most I have ever weighed in my life! At the time I got those scars I was around 21 years old and weighed about 120lbs. I was on the lower end of the average weight for someone my age and height. I was not a very active person. I didn't play any sports where my skin would have been pulled or tugged. I hadn't gotten in to an accident of any kind where I was injured. There was absolutely no part of my LIFE that could have caused these scars. But he's the doctor. And I am a pessimist when it comes to doctors.

I continued using my medicine because the horrible itching just wasn't worth giving up the medicine. And at the time the other medicine that was available were pills and shots and I really wasn't interesting in doing either of those.

It has now been 10 years since I was diagnosed with psoriasis. 10 years that I have been using this medicine. That is EXTREME long term use in most people's books. Well about a month ago a new scar showed up following right along with the old one. It looked like I had my leg sliced opened it was so dark purple. I made an appointment with a primary care doctor (cause my stupid crappy insurance I have now thanks to obama says I have to) to check out my legs. I tried cutting back on my medicine since I was sure that was causing it and had caused the old scars. I get to the doctor (who it wonderful btw, super sweet lady) and she confirms it. "WOW! That's really bad. That's your skin thinning for sure" Her eyes got huge when she saw the scars. She told me to stay away from my medicine as best as I could but understood if I couldn't take the itching and would need to use a tiny dab of it. She gave me a referral to see a dermatologist because of how bad it was she wanted a dermatologists expert opinion on it and how to deal with it and what medicine I need to change to.

So after a month I got in to see a dermatologist on Wednesday. I told her what was going on, she looked at my legs and she had the same reaction as my primary doctor did. Her eyes grew so large and she had this look on her face like if she thought it'd be appropriate she'd say, "OH MY GAH" Instead she just made noises. Mmmph, hmmm, ooww. To which I replied, "Yeah, this is why I'm here". She looked my legs over and then the words I never thought I'd hear came out of her mouth, "Who told you you had psoriasis?" I couldn't believe she just asked that. I told her that the dermatologist that I'd been going to for the past 10 years did. She made some more noises and then, "I don't think that's what you have". I'm thinking are you kidding me right now? You don't think I have psoriasis? So what do I have? Is there something worse that psoriasis? I simply asked her, "What do you think it is"? She said, "I think you've got eczema. I really do think that's what it is". I was still in shock. ECZEMA!

Now for those of you who don't know the difference between psoriasis and eczema I'll share this little bit of information with you. Psoriasis is your immune system telling your skin to grow faster than it's suppose to. Psoriasis requires prescription shots, pills, or creams that cost thousands of dollars sometimes a combination of those things. Eczema is your immune system having a simple reaction to something causing an inflammation on the skin. Eczema might require you to change the soap you use in the shower, use a medicated lotion which is OTC, possible change your detergent. THAT'S IT!!! So simple.

So what am I currently doing? I have changed the body wash I use in the shower from Neutrogena to CeraVe and change the lotion that I use from CeraVe to Epionce which the doctor told me to use every day. Epionce will give my skin the moisture and whatever else it needs to keep from freaking out. That's it. Change my soap and change my lotion. Make sure I use the lotion every day. SIMPLE AS THAT!!!!!!! She did prescribe me a cream that hopefully will help restore those scars partially to normal. So that was pretty great news. I didn't think anything could be done for those. I had just considered those a lost cause. But she said she thinks that the cream can reduce their size and make them look more normal (skin color). So I am using that twice a day for who knows how long lol. She said it could take at least 3 months before I see a real change in them. Which I am happy about because I didn't think anything could be done for the scars. So we'll see.

Bomb Threat Craziness

On Tuesday February 10, 2015 there was a bomb threat at school.

abcnews4: No Bombs Found at College of Charleston

Post & Courier: Confused Chaos at College of Charleston

Charleston Regional Business Journal: CofC Buildings Locked Down

Now here's my experience on that day.

        On Tuesday around 10:50 I noticed a campus safety guy with two police officers standing at the door to my office (I work in a large office with other offices inside it, it's located at the front door to the building, and the fire alarm is outside the door to the office). I thought they were just checking the fire alarm because they kept looking at it. Maybe it's just a test, or maintenance, or some sort of alarm was set off with out it going off in the building. Then I hear the campus safety officer say, "bomb threat". BOMB THREAT are you kidding me right now? We've got a bomb threat? Then I hear one of the police officers say, "he said we was going to shoot everyone in the building". SO NOW THERE'S A SHOOTER? What is going on? Let me also mention that one of the police officers was holding a rifle. Not his small side arm but a very large rifle. 

        The campus safety officer is standing next to the fire alarm saying that he's waiting for confirmation to evacuate the building. A police officer says he doesn't care they have to evacuate the building with or without confirmation. (stupid campus safety, the police are over you and campus safety, what the police say is what you do!) 

        At this point I am standing up and standing in the door way of one of the ladies I work with telling her there's a bomb threat and there are police with rifles standing at the door. She steps out and that's when they turn on the fire alarm. It's blaring and their telling people to evacuate the building. Of course since I was sitting right there and heard what was happening I told all the ladies in our office that it's a bomb threat and we're evacuating. Now normally during a fire alarm we all evacuate and stand on the other side of the street until the fire department says we can enter the building again. Well not this time! We walk outside and the street is lined with police cars and there's a police officer standing in the street telling people to keep going they are closing the street. There was a firetruck blocking one end of the street and police vehicles blocking the other end (it's a very short street) So several of us went down King Street to Starbucks and hung out there waiting to find out whats going on. Luckily I remember that there's a webcam set up in our lobby so I pulled that up and we all watched that on my phone. Of course there was nothing going on, the building was empty. We finally started getting Cougar Alerts, the emergency call system the school has. The alerts were saying to be prepared to evacuate the area, follow directions given by the police, etc. A few minutes later we get another alert saying that a bomb was found. WOW we were all pretty shocked that they actually found one. We're getting alerts as phone calls, texts, and emails all saying a bomb was found.

      

        So now we're all wondering was it a student, a disgruntled faculty/staff member or a crazy ex out for revenge? We stayed at Starbucks till 11:30am when we all started getting hungry. The school still wasn't sure whether or not to send us all home so everyone stayed down town, close by encase they open the buildings back up. They had closed the Beatty Center (where I work), the JC Long Building and Tate Building due to the fact that they are attached to the Beatty Center. They also closed the School of Education, Health and Human Performance (which is sort of across the street from us). The Craig Residence Hall was also closed down the street. Of course any store that was on the street or backed up to the building had to be closed. They closed several of the streets around. 

      We leave Starbucks to go eat at a restaurant near by the building. We see the bomb squad vehicle pull up and there are police every where and many of them with rifles. Which we find kind of strange for a bomb threat. So we're thinking the possibility of a shooter might still be in the mix. Since my phone still has the live feed from the webcam in the building going the other ladies are looking up to see what the news is saying. They're reporting now that there hasn't been a bomb found. WHAT IS GOING ON? So the president of the college sends out an email saying

       So there was no bomb found and those messages were due to a mistyped emergency code. How stupid! Now there is still a bomb threat that they are taking very seriously. So the buildings are still closed as well as the streets. We can see police from our restaurant patrolling with their rifles we even saw them using the bomb detecting robot down a street. We ate a really great lunch and just hung out waiting to hear whether or not we could go home. We continued to receive alerts saying to shelter in place until further notice. Finally at 1:00 we got another email from the president saying

         So classes are canceled until 5:00 and the buildings are closed until further notice but hopefully will reopen before 5:00. Still nothing on whether faculty/staff should stay or go. Well the Dean of the Business School decided to tell us in an email from the assistant dean telling us if we feel we can work more effectively from home we can do that. So we all took that as go home. One of the ladies that I work with dropped me off at the mall where my car was because the express buses don't run during the middle of the day. 

         Now here's a really weird thing. I still had the webcam feed up on my phone and was watching it periodically during the afternoon. At one point though I saw there were 8-9 police officers in full gear were in the building walking around. I texted a couple of the ladies from work and told them to go check out the webcam, but they couldn't get on. It gave them a page not found error. I even tried on my laptop and got the same message. They had turned off the live feed but some how I was still seeing it on my phone. The only thing we can figure out is that because I had been on that web page for hours and never closed it I was still seeing it. I then saw they had two dogs walking around the building too. It was pretty cool to see them searching the building. Of course all I could see was the lobby and whenever they passed by but still it was neat. 

       We got a final email from the president around 4:40. 

       All the buildings were opened and no bomb had been found. He reported that it was unacceptable how poorly the alert system worked in a time of real need. He will be working with the emergency management task-force to sort out the issue and fix it. It was a very nice message and I believe he handled it well. 

      Over all it was a crazy weird day at work on Tuesday.


Charleston City Paper: Bomb Threat included a gun threat

Bomb Threat Audio