Life update – eczema health struggles

I’ve gotten some emails from readers asking about my health after my last post (I know it’s been super quiet on the blog lately – mostly because of various life crazies going on which you’ll hear more about below). Can I just say really quick, you guys are so sweet 🙂 I’m grateful to have such loyal readers checking in on this blog even when I sometimes go months without posting!

One thing about me that tends to surprise people is I have no problem dropping pretty much everything else in my life if need be, to focus on health and wellbeing. It probably has to do with struggling with so many health issues my whole life but I’ve learned that the state of your health affects everything else. It is THE most important thing you can put your time and resources towards and I am someone who will do whatever it takes to feel healthy, vibrant and well. That being said, it’s been necessary for me to step away from the blog and from coaching in general for a while in order to focus more fully on my healing.

Since my dad passed away in December, it’s been hard. Not hard in the sense that I’m struggling with his death or with him being gone. I’ve been able to connect with my dad after his passing, feel his presence and know in the deepest part of myself that he is incredibly happy where he is now and no longer feels pain.

For me, the stress has come from everything else that’s resulted after my dad’s death.

For one thing, my siblings and I are being sued. Yep, you read that right. For months after my dad passed, we didn’t think we had been left anything from him. After all, there was no will. Letters from his wife’s attorney seemed to indicate that he had a very small estate, all of which was going to her. It was incredibly stressful to be left in the dark about everything going on with my dad’s assets and to feel like his wife had the upper hand in all of it.

We probably should have hired a lawyer months ago when false information was being reported and things weren’t adding up but we felt so clueless and small about the whole thing. What did we know about courts and lawyers and legal documents that read like they were written in Greek? We just wanted to walk away from it all and be able to move on.

That is, until we were informed of a lawsuit against us! With the help of a kind lawyer who was able to dissect what the documents meant, we discovered that my dad had indeed left something to us kids after all… something worth a good amount of $$$! Which his wife apparently desperately wants.

So we’ve hired a lawyer. We’re actually doing this…🙈

I’ve learned that it’s very common for a scenario like this to happen after a loved one’s death. People become money-hungry and it’s like some switch flips when there’s an inheritance on the table; a whole other side of someone can come out. Honestly I find being sued by someone your father married to be incredibly disgusting and upsetting and there is a big part of me that wants to walk away from this all. I think about how important it is to me to get along with others. How I don’t want to burn any bridges. How upset my dad would be if he were alive right now to witness a battle over money going on between his wife and his kids. There are more important things in life than money. One of those things is emotional wellbeing.

But then there’s the other side of me that thinks, “My dad left this for us… he put this specifically in our name. This is what he wanted myself and my siblings to have. Is it right to let someone bully us and take that? This money could also really help save certain family members. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have family members who are struggling; family members living in poverty with homelessness looming on the horizon. That is not an exaggeration. And I think to myself, “This money could make all the difference in changing around their future.” Walking away is simply not a viable option here – I need to fight for my family who has nowhere near the cushy life and home that my dad’s wife has.

As you can imagine, there has been so much heavy shit and stress on my mind since my dad’s death. One thing that I’ve absolutely learned so far throughout all of this is: do NOT die without a will! Having a will does not necessarily prevent a money battle from ensuing. After all, wills can be lost or never found; people can contest a will and lawyers can always argue its validity. But a will can help immensely if you get it done the right way AND if you inform all parties involved of what they’re set to inherit ahead of time. This can eliminate a lot of question marks, hurt and confusion.

Knowing just how awful it feels to have to deal with so much legal crap and money battles after my dad’s death makes me want to prevent something like this from EVER happening to loved ones after my own death! I know I’m relatively young but already I’ve taken steps to designate beneficiaries for all my financial accounts – and I want to do more.

By the way, I hope I’m not turning anyone off by talking so much about death and legal matters. I get it – it’s stuff we don’t want to focus our energy on. It’s stuff that feels heavy. But it’s important stuff that impacts the wellbeing of loved ones, which is why I need to talk about it here.

Eczema, arthritis… the spiral downward

Needless to say, it does not really come as a surprise that my health has taken a turn for the worse this year. Since my dad’s death in December and even months before that when I knew he was not going to make it, my health has been a struggle and a mess.

Last October, about a month or so before my dad died, I went with him to his doctor’s appointment where he was told to start chemo. I begged him not to do it, knowing that his body was too weak to survive chemo but the doctor believed otherwise. That was a day of lasts for me – the last time I ever saw my dad and the last bit of hope I had that he would make it through the cancer. I remember going home that night and breaking down in tears to my boyfriend that I strongly felt my dad would not be alive by the end of the year.

That’s how the eczema first started.

Soon after that doctor’s appointment, I noticed my hands began to itch, mostly in-between the fingers. I thought nothing of it at the time – after all, the air was getting colder and drier. I’ve always had a tendency towards dry skin so to me, dry chapped winter skin issues were par for the course. I picked up some extra coconut oil and shea butter hand lotions and started slathering them on throughout the day. By the new year, however, my itchy hands were a legitimate problem – bright red, rough patches between my fingers that were dry as the desert, irritated all the time and itched to the point of bleeding.

I began to notice that some of the joints in my fingers would swell and remain swollen for days or even weeks. The level of this swelling would go up and down and seemed to get especially bad during times when I was feeling the most stressed and rundown or had my period. I could tell that my body was fighting this because sometimes the fluid that was trying to get into one of my finger joints would get pushed instead to more of the surface level of my finger; that is, instead of going into the joint where it would cause more damage, the fluid would get trapped above the joint, forming a lumpy swollen blob in the skin.

It wasn’t until I traveled to Florida in February that I began to realize this was far more than just a bad case of winter skin issues and irritation. The warm, humid Florida air that I was fully expecting to soothe my inflamed skin barely made a difference in the state of my hands. What was going on?? Could this be… eczema?

I should mention that hand eczema is not entirely new to me. I first experienced this awfulness 6 years ago, back when I was eating a very paleo-heavy animal protein diet. And it was BAD back then, covering the entire backside of my hands, making what I have now look like a walk in the park. When I made a change in my diet and started incorporating a lot of other energy healing modalities into my life, the eczema gradually faded away and I thought for sure it was done with.

Seeing this skin condition suddenly pop back up in my life now after all these years, while eating an extremely healthy diet of fruits and veggies no less, has reminded me of just how impactful stress and trauma are in our lives. Extreme trauma and stress – from a death, breakup, job loss, financial loss, etc – can literally be enough to trigger an auto-immune condition to start! Emotional trauma is powerful enough to trigger chronic illness – not create it, but trigger it to show up when it might otherwise have been fought off by your immune system. This means it’s more important than ever to ensure you get an abundance of rest and selfcare when going through anything emotionally and physically taxing.

If anyone else reading this happens to be dealing with eczema or a similar chronic skin condition, let me just say I understand your pain! This skin condition has taken over my life. It’s a constant struggle to tend to this disease and the mental and physical effects it creates are truly devastating.

My hands are almost always bothering me. To give you some level of comparison, think about having the redness and itchiness of poison ivy between your fingers. Add to that a deep prickliness on top of the itch, a burning feeling, inflamed joints and dry as the desert patches of skin on top of all that which tighten up, crack and split open, and sting constantly unless they are forever bathed in oil. This is what eczema feels like. It is maddening, it’s upsetting, it’s stressful and I want nothing more than for it to go away for good!

The itch, when it occurs, is unbearable and relentless. I find myself frantically shaking my hands in the air over my head during itchy episodes just to try to distract from the sensation and intensity of it all. This seems to work well enough if I can keep it up for at least 30-40 minutes straight. As you can imagine, frantically shaking your hands for 40 minutes over your head is quite exhausting and no easy task. But it’s infinitely better than the excruciating, maddening itch.

I wake up in the middle of the night with burning, prickly, intensely itchy hands. Sometimes I am up for hours scratching, applying copious amounts of coconut oil, waving my hands frantically in the air in an attempt to distract from the itch. I wake up in the morning with a million tiny stinging, paper-like cuts and wounds all over in-between my fingers from skin that’s been scratched raw and swollen.

During the day I dread washing my hands because every time I do this, it instantaneously dries out the skin in-between my fingers so that it looks and feels like sandpaper – I’m talking completely PARCHED SKIN to the point of immediately splitting open and bleeding it’s so dry! Which leads to… you guessed it – more aggravation, cuts and itching! Unfortunately, being a raw foodist who homecooks all her own meals means I’m regularly washing my hands a bazillion times a day (not to mention using the bathroom a million times a day!) so I really don’t know how to avoid running my hands under water.

That’s not to say I don’t ever get moments of peace. The itchiness comes in waves, sometimes only for a few hours a day – and those periods throughout the day when my hands stop itching, the redness fades and my skin starts to calm back down feel akin to bliss. On good days, sometimes my hands can almost pass as normal looking. I’ve learned to savor these moments whenever they happen because inevitably the itch comes back. And when it does, it’s all-consuming.

Everything I own gets covered in coconut oil as a result of the oil constantly having to be on my hands. My sheets, my clothing, my furniture, my laptop keyboard, my hair. Good thing I happen to love coconut oil! But my poor rabbit who wants nothing more than love and cuddles from me all the time…

I try to wipe as much oil off my palms as possible when petting her but I can see that some inevitably always gets on her fur, giving her coat a slightly damp, matted look. She doesn’t seem to mind this but I feel so bad!

I dream about the day when this misery will end, when my hands will be rash-free, when I can go about my life without having to fight the urge to scratch, be constantly soaked in oil, and feel fearful and hesitant to do basic things like run my hands under water! My hands consume my life, literally demanding 90% of my attention, day after day after day; hour upon hour of every day. This is no way to live. Sometimes I am just so overwhelmed and upset from the mental and physical stress of it all, there isn’t any room for me to concentrate on anything else. I’m grateful for at least being able to work from home and spend time in bed whenever needed. This has been a saving grace for me, offering me a level of relief and reprieve that has seen me through some of the most painful points.

A couple months ago by chance I came across the term “Psoriatic Arthritis” in a health article I was reading. “Hmm I wonder what that is,” I thought. Like I always do when I want to learn more about something, I googled it and clicked on images. To my utter shock and surprise, what I saw reflected back to me on the screen were pictures that looked eerily similar to my hands! Red, irritated, inflamed skin with swollen finger joints.

Me?? Psoriatic Arthritis? Isn’t that an old person’s disease?

Thinking more about it though, things started to make sense. I did have a severe outbreak of psoriasis back in college which plagued me for years afterward, covering over 80% of my body. I had that very extreme case of eczema covering my entire hands 6 years ago. We definitely have arthritis-like stuff running in the family – my dad had been on medication for gout for over half his life which is quite similar to arthritis and I realized this had probably been passed to me at birth from him.

This also isn’t the first time that I’ve experienced swollen joints. In 2009, I developed a bad case of tendonitis in my elbow that literally took over 3 years to heal. When I couldn’t walk and was bedridden for months in 2013, it was because of chronic edema that had filled my feet, blowing them up 5 times their normal size and making it impossible to stand up. When I came back from traveling for months in Southeast Asia totally weakened, exhausted, and with a compromised immune system, one of my knees swelled up with edema for several weeks while my body detoxed out the many poisons I had picked up. I know there’s a virus and toxins in my body that are ultimately behind all these health issues and I’m determined to clear them out for good!

It’s just freakin HARD to get through the day to day. Sometimes I feel like I literally want to rip my hands off to escape from the maddening prickly, stinging itch! But I keep reminding myself that things will get better in time. I did a couple of week-long juice detoxes recently which have improved things about 10-20%. I will keep doing detoxes every few weeks if need be for the rest of this year to help flush out toxins in my body and clear things up!

Taking time off to rest and be in a calm environment has been helpful. I find peace in routine and in being at home. Alone time, bed time, bunny time, reading time… all these things have been good for me. You guys, I have read so many books this year so far! Probably averaging at least two a month.

My boyfriend has been a savior during this rough patch, making special grocery runs for me, making my healing foods and taking care of house and bunny stuff when I’m not able to. I spend so much time in the kitchen making food every day that it’s felt like such a blessing every time he offers to take something off my plate, even something simple like making my lemon water or a tea. I do feel bad because I know he has his own stuff going on including his own health issues as well as a sick father with Alzheimer’s who was recently put in a nursing home.

Everyone around me is so sick! It feels like almost everyone I know, from family members to friends, clients, acquaintances, even strangers I meet and happen to strike up a conversation with have at least one of the following going on: chronic aches and pains, exhaustion, digestion problems, IBS, skin conditions, migraines, chronic fatigue, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, memory loss, thyroid problems, allergies, fibroids and cysts, anxiety, autism, SIBO, lyme disease, the list just goes on and on.

We live in such a sick and toxic world, yet there is little information about chronic illness when it comes down to what actually causes it and how to cure it. We live in a prescription drug world where the best we know is how to suppress symptoms rather than cure.

There are so many big things I want to bring to fruition for the remainder of this year. After my dad passed, I realized I want to make this wellness blog much more than it is. The Wellness Explorer has always been a creative outlet for me to share and inspire others but it’s been first and foremost always a hobby blog. I want that to change. My dad’s passing has propelled this need in me to talk about health more, to talk about healing practices, things we can do to boost our wellbeing so that when the shit hits the fan, we don’t go down with it. I feel this burning desire in me to grow The Wellness Explorer so that its impact reaches more people, touches more lives. I realize there’s so much more that I could be doing and saying and bringing to light on this blog. There are whole bodies of health topics that I haven’t even gone into yet, important topics that need to be talked about! I want to share these things and know that it starts with me blogging regularly and more often.

But I also know that I have to put health first. I have to, because it doesn’t work any other way. I get frustrated because there’s all this stuff I just want to do NOW but when I follow the advice that other coaches and mentors out there give, which is to prioritize the work, hustle, push through, set deadlines and make non-negotiable goals, etc… my health and skin take a turn for the worse. When I don’t make healing the focus of my days over everything else, I pay the price by ending up knocked out in bed for a week with extra inflamed, itchy hands. It sucks to have to say that but right now my body is in a fragile state and needs extra care.

So I focus my days on selfcare. Cooking delicious and healthy raw/vegan meals. Taking my supplements. Making sure I eat enough calories and greens and fruit and specific cleansing, healing foods everyday. Making sure I get copious amounts of rest and alone time to tend to my mental and emotional wellbeing – as an introvert, this is already super important to me; as an introvert with compromised health, this is 1000% vital!

I want to be honest and upfront about my struggles, even though I know they’re not super positive. But this is real life and despite what we’re bombarded with on social media, life does not always feel easy or exciting or bright. Sometimes we can forget that and find ourselves constantly comparing, wondering why everyone else seems to have it so much easier or better.

On the days when I’m really struggling and having a hard time, I take solace in reading something inspiring – an uplifting book or passage or article, something that will bring me hope and remind me that all storms pass. We may be caught up in a rough time now, the roughest of times, but it won’t last forever. Nothing ever does.

I hope these words and sharing my experience help you to realize that you are not alone in going through the tough times. I hope my words bring you some level of peace – we must still have hope and envision a better future for ourselves no matter how bad things get, no matter how low we may feel, no matter what rough patch we’re currently in. It will get better. It’s just a matter of time.

Read part 2 of my eczema healing journey here.