Recovering from Severe Hand Eczema

I’m getting better!

If you haven’t read part 1, part 2, and part 3 of my healing journey with severe eczema so far, you can read them here.

When I last left off, I was determined to embark on a thorough healing routine, similar to the one I had put myself on when healing my feet 6 years ago. This was proving to be very difficult though, for a few reasons:

1) Having severe eczema on my hands is a LOT worse than what happened with my feet – yes, 6 years ago I wasn’t able to walk but other than the obvious physical restraints, I was not in a whole lot of physical discomfort or chronic stress back then. 2) Work has been INSANE – somehow I’ve managed to freelance this whole time, albeit not a lot of hours, but it’s been extremely stressful and hard to juggle this with a chronic illness. 3) Eating kind of feels like having a second job – there are specific healing juices and smoothies and foods and supplements that I have to get in each day at certain times of the day, not to mention staying on top of eating every hour.

Needless to say, I’ve been juggling a LOT while functioning at less than half my normal capacity.

I quickly realized that my 2013 in-depth healing protocol where I was meditating for 5 hours a day wasn’t going to be doable for all these reasons. I had to let go of that ideal and come up with something different. A healing protocol that would still be effective but work with where I was at and everything I was dealing with. 

Acceptance has been a big part of my healing journey. When I say acceptance, I mean accepting having severe eczema, living with this condition and all the debilitating limitations that have gone with it. My whole life changed once my eczema got so extreme that I couldn’t use my hands. This meant I could no longer dress myself. I couldn’t bathe myself. I couldn’t brush my hair. I couldn’t open doors, go outside, cook food for myself. When you have to rely on someone else to do almost every little thing for you because you’re physically unable to, this is a hard reality to accept. Not to mention every second of the day was spent tending to my hands and trying desperately to stop them from itching and burning.

Every time I looked at the state of my raw, swollen and mangled hands, I felt tortured and traumatized. I felt trapped in a body I didn’t want to be in, trapped in a situation I couldn’t get myself out of as hard as I tried, exhausted, burned out from constant panic and filled with grief. I kept thinking of everything I could no longer do and felt so devastated over the loss of my former life and everything I was missing out on. Those feelings may be completely understandable and justified but feeling this way was holding me back from healing. We cannot heal our bodies coming from a vibrational state of fear and despair. This bit of truth is what helped me to heal my feet those 6 years ago. 

It took me months to simply get to a place where I truly felt ok that the life I used to live was, at least for the time being, totally gone. You may think accepting this sounds depressing but it’s actually very freeing. Acceptance doesn’t mean you give up or no longer try to get better. It simply means you stop fighting what is. Acceptance is part of healing and recovery because it’s all about letting go of trying to control things and sinking into surrender. There is very little we can control in life actually but we CAN control our perspective and how we view things.

So gradually I came to accept that being bedridden was my reality now. It didn’t matter what I used to be able to do – that was then, this is now. And now my whole world was Rest and Recovery. I let go of mourning my former life and former sense of self so I could be at peace instead of constantly feeling tormented. I had to remember compassion – for my situation and for myself.

In September I started working with a trauma coach to help me deal with the mental and emotional effects of the eczema and those weekly sessions with her have been so incredibly healing to me. My coach guided me through meditations and visualizations when I didn’t have the mental or physical capacity to sit still with my eyes closed for even a minute without the itching torture commanding my attention. She helped me process the trauma over losing my dad and not being able to fully grieve the events leading to his death before losing my own health. Most of all, she reminded me of the importance of cultivating self-compassion over self-confidence which is what we all tend to rely on as we move through life.

Compassion is vital when dealing with a chronic illness because so much of what we have and who we think we are is quickly lost. When we can no longer do what we love and what brings us joy, self-hatred and depression start to quickly set in – unless we have self-compassion. I used to think I had so much confidence and self-esteem before this happened. I was always able to see the bright side during a storm. I was the one who lifted everyone else up around me when things got bad. But let me tell you, all that confidence in your ability goes out the door very quickly when you become bedridden for weeks or months. You lose your faith. Having severe eczema has taught me that self-confidence is unreliable and does not see us through the toughest, most challenging times of our life. We have to cultivate other more important things to carry us through.

Medical Intuitive Healing Continued

In October I started working with another medical intuitive (not the first one I started out with, as she unfortunately couldn’t take on anymore new clients). I had my first session on October 1st with the new medical intuitive which I will never forget because I was SO desperate for it. I had been waiting weeks for an appointment and the whole month of September my hands were rapidly getting worse and worse. By the end of Sept, my hands were almost completely covered in severe eczema – the backs of my hands, my fingers, and even my palms. My knuckles and finger joints were all frozen in place from extreme swelling and I could only use two fingers on my left hand, my thumb and middle finger. My skin was peeling off in strips constantly – I was unable to keep any new skin on my hands because as soon as it would form, it would peel off again and bleed and sting and burn.

My hands were constantly raw, relentlessly itchy to the point where I was barely sleeping, and almost every minute of the day went towards tending to my hands, trying to stop the itching of my hands, crying over not being able to soothe my hands. I was exhausted. I was burned out. I was desperate and willing to do anything for relief.

I had a lot of questions for the medical intuitive. She did know about viruses and confirmed that I had a lot of Epstein Barr virus and strep in my body (both of which I already knew about and have had since birth). I have been diligently fighting the Epstein Barr virus for the past 3.5 years, working hard with a raw vegan healing protocol to eradicate the virus for good. So my questions for the medical intuitive were: 

-Why was I exploding in severe eczema now after so many years on the healing path? 
– If this was a detox problem, why were all my usual tried and true detox remedies (juicing, lots of raw foods, eating fat free, etc) not working? 
– Why was I just getting worse and worse?  
– And WHAT would help me get better?

The medical intuitive read my body’s energy and first of all told me I didn’t have rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis like I had once thought several months ago. Even though there was swelling stuck in my joints, joint swelling alone does not equal arthritis. I wasn’t experiencing any pain at all or any other arthritis symptoms – just severe, constant joint swelling.

She explained this swelling was due to my lymph system being overloaded with viral toxins. The severe eczema on my hands was actually a detox response of sorts – detoxing of the Epstein Barr virus that is. This was hard to believe – HOW could detox be THIS bad? 

Here’s what I learned: my body has done a lot of healing from Epstein Barr over the past 3.5 years. But my dad’s cancer last year hit me hard and my immune system took a huge hit from his death. Trauma and stress always give pathogens fuel and help them to grow – not many doctors are aware of this. Because I knew my immune system was being compromised last year, around the same time this was happening I also had made the conscious decision to increase all of my supplements and healing foods to better support my body and protect against a viral flare up. It did help in that my body chose to start pushing out the virus but the combination of extreme grief and chronic stress on my body from heavy detox and life events was all just too much. It really peaked this past summer after my siblings and I were taken to court over my dad’s estate. I just remember being SO overwhelmed with stress and the eczema just kind of exploding. 

My tendency with health has always been to keep doing MORE to support my body, not less, and so, not really sure how to get the eczema to calm down, I started doing cleanses and upping my detox protocols during the summer even more. This is why during July, August and September, the eczema was rapidly spreading more than ever before – all the detox methods that I had put in place those months (tons of juicing and increased raw foods, more herbal supplements, no fat, etc) were rapidly pushing toxins out of my body. What I assumed was the eczema getting worse from Epstein Barr flaring up was more accurately Epstein Barr toxins leaving at a rapid rate, much more than my body could even handle.

Eczema is a tricky kind of disease because as it heals, it often gets worse before it gets better. It has no choice really – toxins and poisons stuck in the body have to go somewhere and the skin is our biggest elimination pathway. 

I also had a LOT of toxin eliminating to do. Pretty much my entire life I’ve had skin problems. As a young child I would develop hives from all sorts of things I became allergic to. I remember having to bandage up my arms every spring when they would break out in itchy rashes for a month or two. I developed severe psoriasis in my teens and though I had been able to get rid of much of it through diet over the years, it’s never fully gone away. 

But now, my body was finally pushing all those toxins out for good. A lifetime of toxins purging out of my hands all at once.

Healing, Finally

For me to start healing, the biggest thing I had to do was pull back. 

Stop most of my supplements, drastically cut back on some of the healing foods I was eating, and incorporate other foods that, while still being healing for me, would also SLOW down my detox. For the first time in 3.5 years, I went from eating a 90% raw food low-fat diet to going about 50% cooked food, with moderate fat. I don’t eat grains and am vegan, so for me this has looked like basically eating a TON more potatoes.

In October, on this new healing protocol, the eczema finally stopped spreading. 

I was so grateful!! 

My body, however, was not used to so much cooked food and fat. I felt so dehydrated on cooked food. I started breaking out in full body red spots which reminded me a little of the kind of psoriasis I developed in my teens. My arms, legs, torso and back became covered in tens of thousands of tiny pinhead red dots, almost like chicken pox. Some spots itched a little but nothing like the itch that had been on my hands.

The itching on my hands, by the way, had simultaneously decreased by about 70%, so I knew I was beginning to heal. I literally was crying with gratitude and relief. My number 1 complaint and the thing that had caused so much constant mental and physical torture was down by 70 percent!!!

Although the eczema rash itself wasn’t improving any, at least the itching had decreased and things weren’t getting any worse. As my body became more accustomed to my new way of eating , the tiny red dots disappeared in a few weeks. By November, I was feeling so much relief in the sense that I could finally start to sleep through the night. Still, I felt that my healing had plateaued as the eczema was not clearing at all and something else was still needed.

I am so grateful to have had the guidance of a medical intuitive these past three months. Without her, I really don’t know if I would have found the missing piece.

In mid-November, under her guidance, I started taking a couple new supplements that would support my detox pathways a little better and this is when the eczema finally started clearing up. In fact, I could not believe how FAST it started disappearing.

Within a few days, my hands went from looking like this:

to this:

Within a week, my hands looked like this:

Incredible, right?!

And it just keeps getting better!!

Since mid-November, my hands have been healing at an accelerated rate and I am now at the point where new skin has completely formed on the backs of my hands. My palms still have a little ways to go with some minor skin peeling and itching but every day I see more improvement. 

With my skin healing rapidly, my focus can now shift towards clearing out the swelling that’s stuck in the joints of my hands. As they’ve healed more and more, I began to notice that one of the fingers on my right hand is stuck in an L-shaped bent position and can’t be straightened. It’s been stuck like this for 4 months straight – no pain at all, just swollen and stuck.

To be honest, I’ve been VERY worried and concerned that this finger might be permanently stuck in a bent position forever – 4 months is a long time to not be able to straighten or stretch out your hand. I began thinking perhaps something was damaged in the joint due to all the inflammation in my hands these past months. There’s also lots of swelling trapped in the knuckles of my hands and other finger joints, keeping them locked and frozen in place. Although my skin is healing, because of the frozen joints, my hands still have very limited use. My right hand is the worse of the two, stuck in sort of a curled position and with a completely bent middle finger frozen in place. As you can imagine, it’s nearly impossible to use this hand to pick anything up. But the medical intuitive thinks this will all clear out in time. It’s just viral toxins stuck in the lymph. She keeps telling me DO NOT WORRY.

My trauma coach tells me the same – that healing takes time and is happening even though you may not see the results right away. These two amazing earth angels💗 One guiding me with the physical, the other guiding with the mental/emotional. I am filled with gratitude for being able to have their ongoing support all these months through a period of deep confusion, darkness and fear.

Every day I pray to my guides and angels for healing, I do a healing meditation, and I try to keep my spirits light and lifted as best I can. This routine, though not nearly as intense and involved, still captures the essence of the healing protocol I used when bedridden 6 years ago. It’s shown me that small efforts still count and make a difference. We don’t have to shoot for perfection and feel at a loss for not being able to do our ideal.

Still, my overall healing routine, when all the foods and everything else is factored in, takes a lot of work. There are over a dozen specific foods I have to eat throughout the day, specific juices and supplements I take at certain times, a hand soaking routine that takes me almost two hours. I’m still dealing with a fair amount of fatigue from months of barely sleeping combined with adrenal fatigue that’s developed from all the trauma of this condition. So it’s going to take patience and time to fully recover.

I’ve started to set timers and alarms for everything including when to meditate and when to take breaks so I don’t forget or fall behind. It’s a lot trying to stay on top of everything to heal, while also working a “real” job at the same time. I do enjoy my freelance work though, which is currently graphic design. Creative uplifting design speaks to my soul and makes me feel like I am putting my own stamp of beauty out into the world. It brings some semblance of normalcy into my day which is otherwise filled with chronic illness management 24/7.

But I’m getting better. I’ve gotten so much relief. I am just SO relieved to finally be healing! Health is a blessing and I thank God every day for this relief from suffering, for my body which is getting stronger and healthier and more alive every day.

Nothing is as important as feeling well.

I look forward to sharing more of my healing journey with you as it unfolds.

With love and healing blessings for the new year~
Diana

Read part 5 of my eczema healing journey here