Reviving This Blog to Log My Adventures with Steroid Withdrawal

Hello, I’m Deanne. I’m 20 years old, have eczema, used topical steroids for 15 years, stopped six months ago and am now documenting the process.

The last posts were from August 10, 2012, when I was still using steroids. Shortly after those photos were taken, I used a method of slathering steroids (triamcinolone ointment) all over my body, and wearing wet wraps for a couple of hours daily. It actually cleared up most of my skin. I’ll post some photos later of what my skin looked like once I started doing those wraps. Either way, I stopped doing the wraps, and my skin was manageable while still using the steroids. My hands were the worst off – never fully healing. One day I decided to look online to see what other people did to manage their hands, and on /r/eczema someone mentioned topical steroid withdrawal. I read into it and decided I’d found the answers. I immediately stopped steroids in the beginning of September 2013. I made a’ blog over on wordpress but I can’t keep up with it – I’m busy with school and busy procrastinating on school work. I still want to document my progress, and since I’m on tumblr mostly every day anyway, I figured I might as well just bring the blog over here, where I can manage it easier.

If tumblr allows, I will try to post the posts from my other blog with the correct timestamps and have them fit into this blog chronologically. If not, I’ll make a superpost and just start from here. 

I stopped steroids at the beginning of September, I’ll say the 3rd. So here’s a track record:

Steroid Cessation began on September 3rd, 2013
Currently in Month 6 of Steroid Withdrawal
Moisturizer Cessation began on March 6th, 2014
Currently in Week 1 of Moisturizer Withdrawal

I have had flares here and there throughout the process. I want to say it was midway through my third month and then late fifth/early sixth. Things were pretty steady in between that time so I never updated my other blog. I took some pictures within that time so I’ll try and post those with the past blog posts as well.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has gone through this process and made the information easily accessible and thank you to those currently going through the process who are helping everyone else go through it as well.

via tumblr http://bit.ly/2KVAsVA published on March 13, 2014 at 10:31PM