Rachel Sees Big Improvements with Her Psoriasis

I am happy to tell you my story although I feel words can never truly represent what I went through and how I felt….. but I will try  : )

In 2008 I had a big operation on my hip (they dislocated it and tidied up the joint and put it back together).

Three days later I had like this horrible red hot rash over most of my body but not my face or arms below the elbow… but everywhere else.

It was SO hot and itchy and well I was told don’t scratch but it was like really impossible… and so not only could I not walk but then I was stuck in bed all day itching and scratching, and slowly feeling more and more sorry for myself. Crying a lot and wishing I could go back in time and never have the operation.

My bed was always full of body dandruff from all the dead skin, not to mention blood and then every morning all the scratches and would be healed over and when I moved they would open up and bleed but actually that pain was better than the itching.

My GP said I had chronic psoriasis and seeing how my Dad has it also and 2 brothers, he said well sorry but this is something you will have to deal with the best you can, and you will have it the rest of your life.

Every morning my head would be stuck to the pillow because the whole back of my head would weep and would be all dried up and stuck there,  and to have a shower to get it all out of my hair would really sting. Not to mention this stuff my doctor would give me to put on my scalp to “fix” it. The first time I got a friend round to do it I rang my doctor in tears and said he must’ve given me the wrong medication because it felt like acid on my head it stung like nothing else I can describe. But no he said it was the right stuff, it was just because it was all open sores. Anyway that stuff did actually make it go away, although it did keep coming back.

I was ready to just end my life about now. I was like how am I supposed to function like a normal person like this? And I felt bad then, because I know there are a lot of people worse off than me but I would just be crying all the time and so embarrassed at how it looked.

I went to see a skin specialist from Christchurch. Well she looked at me and said I had erythroderma. Well I had never heard that word before!  I thought yeeha my GP had got it wrong and yay she is now going to give me something to make it go away.

NOPE. Basically she gave me a huge tub of this greasy mixture and told me to rub this all over my body every night and it should give me relief.  She did say she had never seen it cover so much of someone’s body.  So I put this grease all over myself and it did feel really good. It was paraffin wax and something else mixed together.

I did it every night for a week and well no more flakes in the bed!! Yay.   So that was OK, I could handle it.  I had some patches though that never improved, both elbows, and the tops of both feet, and lower back. Also my neck would flare up about once a month. But from 80 percent of my body covered, to just these bits was like a massive relief.

Then I went back to work. Well tried to. I didn’t realise it, but I had become allergic to almost everything. Skin contact with any animals, especially if my skin was wet was just impossible. And grass would give me terrible big rashes.  Oh and being a dairy farm worker this was really hard! It also got to the stage where I just got so tired I didn’t have the energy to rub this stuff all over me, and yep you guessed it, back it came.

Now this was just ridiculous. Being back at work gave me a bit of confidence and I was like F*** it, I am sick of being like this!! So I started googling everything to do with skin, health, healing, itching, and everything seemed to point to one thing… its actually not a “skin” condition… it’s a liver (or internal)  condition. Well I also couldn’t tolerate bread and sugar and so I started thinking maybe there’s something to that but no way I can be one of those health nuts who make their own gross bread, and juice wheatgrass, and live on lemons and fresh air.

I started going to lots of different health focused events and listened to a lot of people talk about how to get “healthy” and some of it really made sense, but as I worked long hours it was almost impossible to do all the things that these people did.

I met Franziska at one of these presentations (it was a Weston A Price meeting) and she told me about this aloe drink.  Now she had all this energy (I thought she must’ve had like 5 coffees or something) and she just seemed so happy and well, vibrant I suppose. Anyway I didn’t even for a minute think this drink was going to help my skin, I just wanted to FEEL HAPPY like her. Kinda odd now I think about it.

Well my skin actually flared up after about 6 weeks having the aloe drink and so I rang Franziska most unhappy and she informed me that I was most likely detoxing and that the “baddies” were coming out and my skin might just get better after this. Which I knew to be incorrect because it was genetic and she obviously didn’t really know much about skin conditions. But I DID have the extra energy and I was sleeping so well… so I kept drinking it anyway, cause I was used to my skin flaring up so it wasn’t really a big deal any more, I just greased myself up again and carried on.

For me to NOT be itchy and flaky was kinda strange because I was so used to it, and so when this happened it felt really weird. It was like this quietness came over my body. The top of my right foot and my right elbow were the last to clear up and so I did take a photo or 2 but I never really thought it would all go away so I never took any pictures of it when it was really bad. Although when I took the one of my foot I did get one of my leg and you can see it is really gross and dry, but this is actually an improvement on when it was all red.

Well, I have been drinking it for one whole year now. It’s really hard for me to not be “pushy” on people who have skin conditions. When you have come from where I was, and found the grass can be greener… I’m like man why won’t they just drink it?  I think maybe you can get to the stage that you don’t want to have hope, in case it doesn’t work, because you live with it every day, and listen to people complain about their insignificant stuff, and you get angry. Well I did anyway. Angry at my mother because she has perfect skin, angry at my dad because he gave me these genes, and angry at my doctor.

Not any more though, I’m pretty happy now  : )  The patch on my elbow where I must have used quite a bit of steroid cream is the last to get fixed. My arms are quite brown but this patch has always been white and dry but I have noticed in the last week the fine hair has started to grow back there, and little freckles. The top of my right foot is scared because it was the worst, but that is absolutely nothing compared to what my whole body used to be like. My advice to anyone who is going to try the aloe drink, take some photos, because people probably won’t believe you when you tell them how bad it was!

Oh, and my hip was actually very painful especially in winter it used to ache… but I have no problem with it at all now.. I actually thought I would end up having a hip replacement, but it has completely healed and I have no inflammation whatsoever now.

Hope that helps!

– Rachel Burgess | Temuka, New Zealand