Heat Won't Stop Me

Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to go to Disneyland a lot. I don’t post about it much, but I often go around 3-5 times a month, maybe even more, I honestly can’t keep track. I prefer to go during fall, winter and spring, basically when it’s not HOT. I don’t enjoy the mass of sweaty people who constantly bump into you. Oh, and did I mention the heat? Yes the heat, my mortal enemy. How I despise you. You make me sweat to death and I can hardly escape you. Sure, Splash Mountain may cool me off, but you always come back and scorch me. Not to mention how you hurt my eczema.

Oh, how it burns

I recently went to Disneyland for a full day and took my friend with me. As an annual pass holder, I don’t usually stay for a full day, but since my friend doesn’t have an annual pass I decided to go for an entire day, so he could get the most out of it. We were prepared for pretty much everything; we had cooling towels, iced water bottles, natural sunscreen, and more. The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was how my eczema was going to react. Like I said, I don’t often stay for an entire day especially in the summer, so I was slightly shocked when my eczema started flaring.

The flare

At first, I hardly noticed it. I’d look down at it and be like “oh yeah, that’s there”, and continue with what we were doing. It didn’t start flaring until around 12pm. My skin started getting drier, scalier, and redder than normal. It didn’t help that I decided to eat a chocolate chip cookie beforehand, which probably had part in triggering my eczema. My topical meds aren’t easy to take to the park with me. I didn’t want it to splatter all over my backpack, nor did I want to leave it in the hot car. After lunch I realized that it wasn’t getting much better, so I decided to use what I had with me to combat it.

Quick thinking

After lunch I hurried to the restroom, I washed my wrist the best I could, ran water over my cooling towel, put it around my neck, and wrapped my hand around the longer part that was hanging from my neck in order to constantly have something cold and soft against it. I then grabbed a frozen water bottle and put it in the side pocket of my backpack, so I could be sure my body had the water it needed, plus occasionally holding ice to my wrist helps cool me down and helps decrease the itchiness of my eczema.

The result

After constantly drinking water, making sure my wrist stayed away from the sun, and keeping it as damp as possible it started feeling better. The itchiness went away after a while, the redness faded, and after making it as damp as possible the scales decreased as well. All in all, it helped a lot more than I thought it would. This isn’t the best way for me to constantly treat my eczema, but that day taught me that no matter what, I can always find a way to treat my eczema when I can’t do my normal routine.

What are some makeshift ways you’ve had to treat an eczema flare?