3 Things Every (Almost) Person With Psoriasis Can Relate To

There is no doubt that psoriasis is a highly variable disease. Every person I have met or talked to that has it experiences different triggers, symptoms, treatment successes, etc. For instance, I tried cutting out inflammatory food, but it just made me grumpy, while other people have been able to achieve a dramatic reduction of symptoms from dietary changes. However, it seems like there are some core experiences that almost everyone who has lived with this disease for a period of time can appreciate (I use that term lightly.) These are the things that make you say “Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean!”

Eye Sores

I never thought of skin as being a deadly weapon, until some flakes decided to travel into my eye. I am now thoroughly convinced that flakes are the not-so-distant cousin of glass. Don’t even think about trying to blink it out—it will just make it become angry and more annoying.

This is especially true for me since I wear contacts. All it takes is the tiniest nomadic plaque to fall down and get in between my eye and my contact lens to make me whimper like a puppy. I am fairly certain this obnoxious feeling is equivalent to ancient torture rituals.

Those with glasses have their fair share of annoyances as well. In high school, I had some pretty sweet Harry Potter meets Where’s Waldo glasses. As cool as you can imagine they were, they were made exponentially cooler by the ever-present smudges. Whether it was due to topical ointments or lotions, I always tended to smear oily fingerprints all over them.

Pocket Blizzards

Skin flakes don’t just get in your eyes, they get everywhere. They are like glitter. One place in particular that they seem to always build up is in my pockets. This always makes for an awkward situation when I go to pull my money out and pay for something. Now, money has a bad rap already for being germ carriers, so you can imagine the recipient's face when an ethereal cloud of DNA literally poofs out of my pocket as I retrieve some bills.

To make matters more uncomfortable, sometimes the hand that just moments ago pulled out not just money, but also the home-grown snow shower, is cracked and covered in dried blood. This is undoubtfully embarrassing sometimes, but you know I always like to find the silver lining in everything. I can’t tell you how many free drive-thru meals I have gotten! It is not uncommon for the cashier to take one look at my frosted money and ripped-up hand and say, “You know what man, this one is on the house.”

Glazed

My plaques don’t just bleed, but sometimes they just weep a clear, sticky substance. This it the final thing I have found to be quite common among my psoriatic friends. This gooey ooze tends to be worse after taking a hot shower. I know—psoriasis 101—don’t take hot showers, but sometimes it felt so good! The result was super itchy skin that beckoned me to scratch.

The result of my scratching was an increased amount of leaking. The worse spots were my legs, the large spot on my chest, and the crevices around my nose. The legs were by far the worst since the ooze creates a type of glue that bonds to cotton socks. The only good thing about this situation is that the locations that gave me the most trouble were also common sweat areas. Therefore, the best way to normalize my glazed appearance was to throw on some sweats, some running shoes, and voila! It looked like I had just finished a super intense workout.

These symptoms are all annoying, embarrassing, and make for awkward situations. But my hope is that you can find comfort in knowing that there are others just like you going through the same thing.