Hi Everyone,
Posted on the other board but thought I'd try here too,
I'm some what of an 'auto immune disease' collector unfortunately, and psoriasis seems to be my latest addition! My body has a long history of deciding to over react to life: I have multiple allergies and I take large quantities of anti histamines daily to help with this, along with a restricted diet. I also have Graves disease (overactive thyroid) which is currently behaving itself unmedicated. Past history of reactive asthma and I'm always getting random rashes/uticaria type things. Is there a correlation between psoriasis and allegies btw?
Anyway, towards the end of November I was bitten quite extensively (lower and upper legs, back and arms) No idea what it was, but I wish I'd caught the little blighter at it!! I'm prone to having bad reactions to bites so i wasn't surprised when they doubled up into welts and started to crust over...but then, they didn't get better, they were weeping and multiplying so after a month (oops) I went to the doctor fearing I had ringworm! The doctor was shocked by how extensive it was and i got a bit of a telling off for leaving it so long but I can't go every time I have a reaction or I'd never leave. Whilst I was there, I also mentioned that some of my toes had swollen and gone purple. After being perplexed for a fair while, he decided it was psoriasis and he also thinks that my toes might be connected to the problem too - psoriatic (sp?) arthritis. He asked if my toes hurt, but tbh they're so cold I can't feel them most the time. Due to this, he queried Raynauld's (great) but sent me on my way with some cream and told me to keep an eye out for any pain with my feet.
Roll on a week and a half and the cream has worked but I'm unsure when you're supposed to stop using it? The excess skin has gone, I've just got large red circles everywhere now - should I stop? he said no more than 2 weeks and I'm due to see him this coming week but I'm aware that it's steroid based and so I don't want to be using it unnecessarily. Also, it feels like I've sprained both my wrists and my ankles - driving is becoming uncomfortable (not major, but it's there) even just doing nothing it feels like someone is screwing into my joints (am I even making sense?) I can cope with it, but I'm wondering whether this is psychosymatic because I've been told to keep an eye on the pain. Also the pain doesn't seem to correlate to the where the swelling is, I have none on my hands, so maybe it is raynaulds? Who knows? (Edit, since posting this originally yesterday on the other board, I'm getting swellings on my knuckles...wtf is going on with me!!)
One last thing (apologies for the ramble!) seeing as the patches have got better with the cream, does this mean it's definitely psoriasis? The doc queried whether it might be discoid something or other! Obviously I know I'll get answers when I see him, but it's always good to get info from those who've been there and done that!
Laura
