One year and seven months ago I moved to
Manchester for a job starting out in the TV industry. This was a brand new
start for me and I was buzzing about finally being able to put my degree to
good use! I found a great house to live in with a small community of friends
and I was excited to start this new chapter of my life.
Before I moved to Manchester I had started
getting red patches (almost like a rash) under my eyes and on my lids, and also
around my lips. I was so confused and curious as to what could be causing this
so I went to my mum for advice. The Queen of allergies and all things related
(runs in the family along with eczema, asthma and hay fever), and of course she
had a few ideas as to what it could be. She suggested I might be allergic to tomatoes,
and maybe peppers, as they are both nightshade foods, which many people are
known to have an allergy/intolerance to. So, naturally I cut out tomatoes from
my diet – I did eat them pretty much every day whether it was fresh, or as a
sauce - and waited to see what happened.
It was around this time I moved to
Manchester, and it became in increasingly more difficult to cut out this food;
the Saturday night pizzas, the lasagna dish I loved to make, the curry nights
out! It’s not until you try and cut something out that you realize that it’s in
EVERYTHING! I slipped off the bandwagon a few times, but the rashes and red
patches were so hit and miss, I wasn’t quite sure what I was actually allergic
too. The fact that I’ve always had eczema didn’t help clarify anything either. I
was told stress can aggravate eczema, and yeah, it’s true. I knew that before
all this started happening, since exam time where I would scratch my arms until
I bled. The point was, my skin had never been in this condition before and it
was actually really confusing.
It wasn’t until a couple of months down the
line after moving to Manchester that I had the first, really visible reaction.
I was at work running on a shoot, and gradually throughout the day my face
started to become red and patchy in places, and it felt horrible. I avoided tomatoes
at lunch and I didn’t even have the dominos pizza that was being passed around
in the evening! It got to the point where I just wanted to go home and hide
under my duvet until my face was back to normal.
I booked an appointment at the doctors and
enquired about the ‘elimination diet’ that someone had recently told me about.
I had done some of my own research and knew that it was basically a diet of
pork and berries! When I finally got an appointment with a dietician, she had
no idea what I was there for, due to the lack of detail in my notes from my
doctor. As the appointment went on, we both realized that she probably couldn’t
really help me (dieticians focus on intolerance to food and IBS), but I was so
adamant I had an allergy to tomatoes, that I was desperate to try the
‘elimination diet’. All in all I think I kept it up for about a three days, but
I was still having reactions to something else in my life.
So, back to the doctors I go. It took ages
to get an appointment with a food allergist – during which time I looked like a
red-eyed panda most days, and my skin would itch like crazy so I was constantly
covered in eczema pretty much all over my body. I began to think it was alcohol
– particularly white wine, as whenever I would drink, in the next 12-24 hours
that’s when my skin would react.
When I finally saw the food allergist in
July 2012, the unfortunate thing was my skin was perfectly clear! (I was taking
steroids for Bell’s Palsy which had suddenly happened a few days before my
appointment). So the annoying thing was, the doctor couldn’t see what I
normally looked like when I had a reaction! Luckily I had taken photos of when
I was at my worst for this exact reason and I suppose that was better than
nothing. During my appointment the doctor asked what I thought I was allergic
to, and how long after eating those things did I have a reaction. My reactions
came on roughly 12-24 hours after I thought I had eaten something I shouldn’t
have. When I said this, she told me that food reactions are up to 2 hours after
eating the food. Regardless of this, they took blood samples to test for
tomatoes. The test came back negative of course and I felt like I had hit
another brick wall.
When I received the results from the food
allergist, she had referred me to the dermatologist. The next available
appointment was a few months away and I was reaching the end of my patience, I
felt like I was constantly reacting to anything and everything. During the week
I would avoid wearing makeup so my skin could recover, as I would always seem
to have reactions on a weekend. I hated my face, especially when I would walk
into an office full of gorgeous girls with clear, non patchy skin! I think it
was around this time that I started looking into Chinese herbal medicine as
another option. Every time I passed a Chinese clinic I would see the signs that
said ‘Treatment for Eczema’ and wondered how much it might be able to help me.
I decided to book an appointment at a small independent clinic in the center of
Manchester – ‘Dr & Herbs’ felt just a little bit too mainstream – and after
a half hour consultation I walked away with a concoction of dried herbs, a
couple of small pots of cream and a shower gel. Oh, and £75 lighter. But you
should have seen how many different herbs they measured out into the container;
it must have been about 20 different brown powders. Regardless of my lack of
knowledge of Chinese medicine, I walked away from that clinic with positive,
high hopes and feeling like I’d taken control of my own situation. To be fair,
at this point I hated the NHS and would have tried anything for pretty much any
amount of money I could afford. And I mean anything.
Have you ever tried Chinese herbal
tea/medication? Any one reading this and considering going for it, let me just
tell you a few things…
A.
It’s expensive. It was costing
me £35 a week just for the tea alone.
B.
It tastes like an ashtray. My
particular concoction was a mixture between ashtray, Bovril and dirt. Needless
to say it was a struggle to keep down.
C.
You have no idea what’s in it.
(I’ll get back to this in a minute)
I started drinking the herbs on the
Saturday night and less than a week later the skin on my face was practically
clear. I was literally over the moon that I had found something that actually
worked!! I continued using the herbs for the following few weeks, however I was
becoming conscious of the amount of money I was spending, racking up a bill of
£140 a month. When my appointment with the Dermatologist finally came around I
had to explain the whole past year all over again, I had told this story too
many times for my liking! In the week leading up to this appointment I had been
running out of the tea, and I started taking tablets they had given me to see
me over until my next appointment. My skin had started going back to its old
red and patchy ways, but I was almost glad. I wanted more than just an
expensive miracle cure. I wanted a reason, an explanation; I wanted a little
bit of science behind my condition. I explained to the Dermatologist I had
started using Chinese herbal tea, which had really worked for my face. I was
kind of expecting to hear what he told me, as I’d already done some research on
Chinese herbal medicine, and various websites told me that some of these
medicines contained steroids. The doctor wasn’t sure if my Chinese medicine in
particular had steroids in it, however due to the fact that it cleared my skin
within 5 days, it’s pretty safe to say it probably did.
It was a bit ironic that I had tried to
avoid using steroid creams, when the tea I was drinking could have contained
them. The doctor gave me a cream called Protopic to use on both my face and
body when I had flare ups and also to keep it under control. I left the
hospital feeling back at square one again. It had taken over a year to get to
this point of seeing the correct specialist, and I was sent away with a prescription
for a lousy tube of cream. I was however booked into the Contact Dermatitis clinic
for patch testing in January 2013 so had something else to look forward to for
an answer.
Over Christmas my skin worsened and I had a
couple of bad reactions of really puffy, red swollen eyes and lips, and patches
of itchy skin all over my body. Because my skin had been so clear during the
time I was on the Chinese herbal tea, for it to go back to the way it used to
be was really depressing. It was in the first week of January I had a bad
reaction to something. I went to the walk-in clinic and the nurse (didn’t even
get to see a doctor!) gave me a couple of prescriptions for the creams that I
had ran out of, but didn’t give me any steroids, she just told me to take
antihistamines. Stood in the pharmacy area of Boots *other chemists are available* waiting for my prescriptions, I just
felt like the whole shop was staring at me. I avoided eye contact with
everyone, even the staff who served me. I know it’s a bit pathetic, no one
would ever had said anything, it’s just the fact that I was sick to death of
the reactions, and not knowing when one would happen next, or how bad it would
be.
A few weeks later I found myself at the
hospital in the Contact Dermatitis Investigation Unit, on a Monday morning,
carrying a bag full of all the products I use, from my shampoo and hair spray,
through to my hand wash and makeup. In my initial assessment in the previous
week my doctor (who was so lovely by the way) had explained what they would be
testing for and how the next week of tests would pan out. So basically I was
patched up with small amounts of chemicals and products I might come into
contact with in every day life, as well as my own cosmetics and products. In total
they were testing for 140 different ingredients/products, and 14 patches were
placed on my back, upper arms and stomach. I wasn’t allowed to get them wet at
all, I wasn’t allowed to shower or bathe, and I had to be careful not to let
them fall off. They first day they were on was a bit weird, they felt really
tight and slightly itchy. The second day the same but even more uncomfortable.
By the end of the week I was ready to rip the patches off my skin and stay in
the shower all day. (I know what you’re
thinking but I had a shower from the waist down every day that week.)
On the Friday morning they took the patches
off and examined the effects on my skin. Straight away the (lovely) doctor
could see I had a huge reaction to Ammonium Persulfate. Hair Bleach. Incase you
don’t know me, I have been blonde since around the age of 18. I also found out
I am allergic to Phthalic Anhydride, Adipic Acid and Neopentyl Glycol…. A.K.A Nail varnish. These chemicals are in most
new nail varnishes and help strengthen the varnish. I am also allergic to
Perfume, and anything that contains perfume. There are a few different
chemicals of perfume that you could be allergic too, and the one that I react
to is called (Alpha ) Hexyl Cinnamal Dehyde. Most of the time it’s written as
Hexyl-Cinnamal, Perfume, Fragrance or Parfum on the ingredients list of
products. There were two chemicals that were inconclusive due to the fact my
skin had a patch of eczema near it, so I am due to be re-tested for these next
week. One of them is Lanolin, which is derived from Sheep wool, and the other
is Toluene 2.5 Diamine, which is a type of hair dye.
I felt such a sense of relief as I walked
out of the hospital, I felt like a new woman, and I couldn’t wait to get rid of
all the products I couldn’t use anymore. It was so bizarre thinking about all
the times I thought I was allergic to alcohol, when really it was all the
makeup and hairspray I was using for the night out that was making my skin go
crazy!! How many people had I actually told I was allergic to tomatoes!? I didn’t
care any more, I was just so happy to have found an answer after a year and a
half of mystery.
If you’ve just read this and are having similar
reactions, please make sure you keep going back to your doctor until you get
the treatment you need. If you have a hospital appointment a few months down
the line, keep calling to see if they have any cancellations so you can get
seen sooner. The NHS need their ass kicking to be honest.
Hols x
