How Do You Handle Hard To Treat Areas?

No one ever wants to be diagnosed with psoriasis. I know I certainly didn't. In fact, I had no idea what psoriasis was until I was diagnosed with it. Even then, I didn't know even half of what I know now. For instance, I'll bet most of you were never told that there are hard-to-treat areas of psoriasis. I don't remember ever being told this until recently. After all these years, why am I just finding this out now?

I feel like there are certain things doctors should tell us to help us better understand what we have to deal with. Since there is no cure for psoriasis, having proper knowledge is so important. I've had psoriasis for 20 years, and until recently, I couldn't even tell you what the hard-to-treat areas were.

The scalp

There are five hard-to-treat areas, and the scalp is one of them. I have very mild scalp psoriasis. The problem with having scalp psoriasis is trying to get the treatment shampoo down to your scalp. The other issue is rinsing most of the medication off even if it reaches your scalp. My scalp psoriasis is at the base of my hairline on my neck, and it just seems to be resistant to anything I put on it. Biologics seem to do nothing to touch it, which perplexes me. Seeing that they're injected into your body and travel around, you would think they would have the best chance.

The hands and feet

I am putting these two areas together because they are something I know all too well. My hands were the first to be covered when my psoriasis spread like wildfire. I still have some post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the stares and the questions I received about my hands. I remember one clerk in a store refusing to take money from me when she saw my hands. Eventually, with biologics, my hands cleared up. They do occasionally get a small area on them when I am in a flare. Honestly, if they ever get to the point they were all those years ago, I will wear gloves. I feel like no one says anything when a person wears gloves. If you've experienced this, please share so I will be aware of it.

Even now as I write this, my feet are terrible. The psoriasis is more on my ankles and toes. My left ankle is almost completely covered in plaque psoriasis. However, it is the toes on my right foot that are covered. When I brought it up to my dermatologist that these areas had been there for a very long time, he hit me with new information. He said they are one of the hardest areas to treat. I wanted to yell about how I had never been told that, but I kept it to myself. However, I did catch the fact that he said "one of the" so I asked about the others.

The face and nails

In conclusion, he told me the face and nails are also hard to treat. Fortunately, I have been blessed not to have psoriasis on either of those places. I can see how the face would be tricky to treat. That is a sensitive area. While I have had psoriasis on my hands, it has never been around my nails. So that concludes the hard-to-treat areas.

Did you know these areas made the list? Do you do something that helps treat these areas outside of the creams and shampoos? If so, please share so that we all may stand a better chance of treating these areas.