This is his skin at the moment which is caused by eczema. When I think of eczema I picture dry skin that perhaps flakes a bit. Never, ever have I seen a skin condition referred to as eczema look like this. It looks sore so I can't begin to imagine how Wee Z must feel having to live with his skin in this condition.
It looks so bad I think you might be thinking that I'm doing nothing to help his skin. Where's the cream for this boy? Change your washing powder! Check his diet isn't causing this! I promise you though, I have done everything I know and have been told to do and yet nothing seems to work.
The most frustrating things about this is his skin only started to look this way in August last year, and by last year I mean 2011. Only 5 months ago. Wee Z did have a slight case of baby eczema but it cleared up before he was 1 and I've never had any problems with his skin since. I have no idea what has triggered his skin to flare up like this other than he started to drink full fat milk at nursery. We don't drink milk, through choice and they only have semi-skimmed milk in their cereal. Nothing else in his diet or our lifestyle had changed.
As soon as I noticed his skin flaring up I started using diprobase which is the cream Miss C uses for her eczema and the cream Wee Z used as a baby. It didn't make his skin any worse but it wasn't getting any better. Whilst we were on holiday, the sun helped his skin improve and it looked a lot better when we got home. I still took him to the Doctors as I was concerned about how quickly his skin flared up. The Doctor seemed to think it was more of a heat rash but to continue using his cream to keep the skin from being dry.
A month later and his skin was not improving, infact it was getting worse. The backs of his knees were raw from him scratching and even though I kept his nails as short as I could, he still managed to open the skin. The sides of his legs were covered in the material from his trousers, literally sticking to the wounded skin.
I went back to the Doctor and saw a different Doctor who, sad to say, was a lot more helpful than the previous Doctor we saw. She swabbed his skin as she thought he probably had an infection because the wounds weren't healing. Wee Z had a 7 day course of penicillin to take and she prescribed us with a 2% steroid cream and more moisturisers.
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| His skin much improved |
I was told to use the steroid cream once a day for 2 weeks and his skin looked amazing after using it for only a few days. I was to continue using diprobase although we did try dermol cream which didn't help and I also had to use oilatum in the bath. After the 2 weeks he went back to the Doctor and she prescribed a 0.5% steroid cream and an oil based moisturiser. We were told to use the steroid cream for 4 days and then stop completely and only use his oil based moisturiser and the oilatum in the bath. After about a week of using the oil based moisturiser, Wee Z's skin started to get bad again and the oilatum didn't seem to be helping either. Infact I have used oilatum before and it only seemed to flare both Wee Z and Miss C's skin up.
We are going to the Doctor again to have his skin rechecked and I'm fairly certain it is infected again. He's not allergic to anything, nothing in terms of diet or washing powder has changed and we've asked nursery to stop letting him have milk so I really am clueless as to what is causing his skin to look like this. I really hope we can get him help with this sooner rather than later as I'd hate for him to have to live with this for much longer. And bless him, he doesn't complain once.
