Have Eczema? Don’t Do This!

When my eczema came back after years of not having it, I had no idea what to do. Admittedly, I had no idea that I even had eczema for the first few months. My mom knew I had eczema, but she had completely forgotten about it since it had been so long since I had a flare, so even she didn’t know what to do. However, I do remember some of the incredibly stupid things I tried to ease the itchiness and I’m going to share those with you today.

Guitar strings

I used to take guitar lessons. It was something I was always interested in and found cool. I must warn you though, if you ever want to learn a musical instrument, don’t start with guitar. It’s a great instrument, but it’s definitely not the easiest place to start, especially when you develop eczema on your palm.

Finding crafty ways to scratch

One day during my guitar lesson, I was tuning out what my teacher was telling me (which I don’t recommend doing) when all of a sudden, the eczema flare on my palm started to itch. Now, I don’t know what brought me to do this, maybe I was incredibly tired, maybe it was stupidity, I honestly don’t know what I was thinking, but what I do know is that you should never use your guitar strings to scratch your eczema.

The fallout of guitar strings

That’s right; I rubbed my palm up against my guitar strings thinking “Hey, this seems like a good way to scratch this itch!” It was not, it was very much the opposite of that. It started to burn, it became incredibly red, and it became extremely sensitive. Luckily, I didn’t break it open. But I did make it angry. I don’t think my guitar teacher noticed and if he did, I hope he has an interesting story to tell people.

Bug bite ointment

I remember for the first 2 months after it started developing; my mother was dead set on it being bug bites. It was the beginning of winter and at our old house I’d usually get bug bites during that time, so I believed her. So, I would put ointments for bug bites on it…That definitely didn’t help, in fact it made it burn a lot more than I would’ve liked.

Makeup and makeup wipes

One time I got a rash on my eyelid and instead of not wearing makeup until it was gone, I wore eyeshadow every time I left the house. Later on, I’d scrub the heck out of my eyelid with makeup wipes. That just made it take longer to go away. FYI: If you get eczema there, don’t wear makeup.

Learning from mistakes

In the end, I was incredibly dumb when it came to caring for my eczema during the first year, but in my defense, I didn’t realize it was eczema for a greater portion of that year. While I would never suggest any of those silly things that I did, they did push me into finding out what these rashes were and how to find better ways to deal with it.