A Battle with Eczema

My oldest child woke up one morning a few weeks back with one very red, scaly eyelid--to the point that people were stopping her in the halls at school and asking her if she'd been hit.  It was pretty devastating.  I had never seen my easy-going girl so down.

I'm writing about this this morning because it looks like things are finally on the upswing.  If anyone else has this problem, or if we ever have this problem again in our house, I thought I'd best share how it was dealt with, so it can be nipped in the bud quickly--unfortunately in our case this time, it's been nearly a month.  From what I understand it is seasonal and really bad at this time of year, so chances are, it will rear its ugly head again for her in the future.

It had started to show up as a very small thing on the 4th.  I took her in to see a doctor on the 9th. At that point in time, it was all over her right eyelid and was traveling down below her eye as well.  She also reported that it had started in on the left side of her face too.

The doctor talked about using Vaseline on it and mentioned a few lotions.  To this point, we'd used Cetaphil as we use that on our other kids when their skin is exceptionally dry.  With her's, it just wasn't working like we'd hoped it would.

She started the Vaseline a couple days later--over the weekend.  She had waited to use it because she didn't want to go to school with shiny eyelids--that'd be even worse than having people approach you and ask what kind of abuse you were taking. 

She was hoping for an immediate fix, but alas, it's taken until today to really look almost normal again.  Not only that, but when she first used the Vaseline, her eyelid got very swollen and red; she almost gave up then and there, but we told her to give it a chance.  Needless to say, she didn't want to draw attention to it even more, but who can blame her?

She sings with a musical group, and they had their first two performances last Sunday.  She tried to figure every way she could not to stand out.  She wore her glasses and pulled her bangs over that right eye so no one would notice.  Ugh!  There was my beautiful girl feeling like a toad.

On Monday (I believe it was), I got a call from her in the middle of the school day.  She informed me that it was now traveling down her face.  She had left that morning very discouraged anyway, so this was just another blow to her suffering self-esteem.

I called the doctor and was asked if we were using the Vaseline and the CeraVe.  The what?  She told me it was on the papers the doctor gave us.  Neither #1 nor I remember the doctor talking about this, but I guess that'll teach me to read over the instructions when I leave an appointment, huh?

CeraVe is a new lotion on the market.  It's great for eczema.  I went to RiteAid and purchased it for about $15.  I called #1, and offered to bring it by to her, but I only got her voice mail, so we didn't connect until she got home from school.

She was to use the Vaseline at night--a large amount of it, and the CeraVe during the day--applying it many times.  Yay!  Something that didn't make her face shine.

She has been very diligent about doing these things and is now benefiting from looking almost like herself again.

I was going to post a photo of here here, but she isn't ready for that yet.  She has Vaseline all over it right now.  Hopefully in the next couple days we'll have one for you.

I'm really glad that, if she's going to have this problem, that she had it now.  Next year, she won't be here, and it'll be good that she already knows how to handle it, so she can do it on her own.