5 YEARS LATER…. LIFE BEYOND ECZEMA

It’s difficult to believe that 5 years have passed since I found Dr Aron on the internet. I quickly joined the Dr Aron Eczema Treatment Facebook group and signed up the same night. I was just in time to get the treatment before Dr A closed for December. T’s eczema was so bad, we had given up hope. That was until I saw Dr Aron being interviewed on South African TV. After 5 and a half years of suffering, his was the first logical explanation that I had heard, and we had taken T to the BEST doctors in the country, even a professor of Dermatology.

Background

T had become a shy,little girl, who was ashamed of her skin. She was always in long sleeves in the ridiculously hot South African weather. Her sleeves were always streaked with blood and her white school uniform highlighted her plight. Teachers, parents and other children would stop us and ask “what’s wrong with her?” like she had leprosy. In South Africa with the high rate of HIV, blood alarmed people and they kept their distance.

Kids didn’t want to play with her and when she joined the netball team, she was humiliated further. At the age of 6, T played her first match. It was so cute. I was there to support her, but because it was hot, she was itching. It wasn’t long before she had scratched her skin open and the blood was dripping down her arm. Open skin, mixed with sweat was painful, but she was being brave. Of course when the coach saw her arm, her game was over. We both cried when she was sent off the field.

As a parent, it rips your heart out to watch your child suffering. I have written many blog posts about this soul-sucking disease (I’ll post links below) so I won’t go into any  more detail, but the trauma, as I now know, is a form of PTSD.

A day in our life during a flare

Wake T at 5.15am and smear her open skin areas with Advantan Fatty ointment. Cover the rest of her body in Vaseline as instructed by specialists professor. Strip bloody and oily bed linen, being careful to keep all the skin flakes that she had shed in the night, in the fitted sheet to be shaken outside before washing. Dose her up with antihistamine, fish oil, zinc and a plethora of other medications to help with her skin. Help her dress. Carry her down the stairs because the scabs on the back of her knees tear open when she walks. Walk her into school because she’s scared and sore. Go to work in oil-smeared clothes.

Fetch T and take her home, pull her blood and oil soaked clothes off. Sit her in the bath with her tights on, to soften the scabs which had healed onto her tights. Wash the tights if they came off or cut them off leaving black pieces stuck to her skin. Homework. Reading on the oil stained leather couch. No energy to play. Back into the bath without the usual oily additives to moisturize her skin. Bleach bath. Small amount of water with a cup of bleach. Carefully pat dry. Smear handfuls of Vaseline and Advantan Fatty Ointment onto her skin. Bandage her entire body like a mummy with wet bandages over the Vaseline and steroid mix. Cover with oversize pajamas. Wrap her in a warm blanket while she shivers from the wet bandages and PJs. Have dinner.

Remove bandages before bed. More Vaseline and Advantan, more antihistamine. Into bed. Lie with her, tickling her sticky, oily, flaking skin to try to minimise the need to scratch. Still awake after midnight, sometimes through the night. Lying on my home office floor while I finished working.

Even our immediate family and close friends didn’t know how bad it was.Ninety percent of tasks mentioned above, included pain and screaming. This was a ‘normal’ day for us, for a long time.

Results

We followed Dr Aron’s instructions to the letter, from bed rest for the first few days, to no swimming for 4 months, even in the Johannesburg heat. We were fortunate to get results almost immediately. Hubby told me not to be so invested because we had seen good results before (from IV steroid and antibiotics.) I was still excited. This was from a cream! AND even though I was applying it often, the diluted compound meant I was using less steroid than ever before. It took a while, but her skin cleared up completely, including the boils and pimples and stayed clear! When I tell people that Dr A and the Aron Regimen gave our whole family our lives back, I really mean it.

I have three children. One child has eczema. The impact was far-reaching. Stress, depression, ADD, numerous procedures, hospitalizations, the onset of an auto-immune disease, years of psychological help to get her through it. We all suffered from staph infections no matter how much we sterilized and cleaned. Eczema impacted our whole family.

Look at her now!

T loves animals BUT is highly allergic to any animal with hair, fur or feathers (pretty much all the cute ones.) The more dander or dust that can be collected on the animal, makes it worse. Before AR she rode a horse and went into a full body flare for  a week. This is her now:

Two years ago we moved across the world to New Zealand and I was stressed that she would regress. I had nothing to fear. Her skin remained 100% perfect BUT as any 13 year old, she chooses to enjoy her life doing the things she loves – horse riding twice a week, swimming in the pool and the sea, playing on the grass, building sand castle on the beach and cuddling any animal she can find. Yes this impacts her skin sometimes, but she’s happy to put up with a bit of an itch to do what she loves. When her skin is itchy for longer than a couple of days,we put the cream on. Are we worried about using Dr Aron’s compound when she needs it? No, because when she does, it’s less than half a teaspoon every couple of weeks. We’re still using the same pot we got 2 and a half years ago. Her skin has never again gone into a full blown flare even though she’s putting it to the test.

Thank you Dr Aron, words cannot express how grateful we are.Happy Aroniversary to us!