Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Yet even more fun with Psoriasis
I woke up this morning and felt like total crap. I’ve been taking the chemotherapy drug Methotrexate for my psoriasis. I take two pills Monday evening, two pills Tuesday morning, and two more pills Tuesday evening. I don’t take any more until the following Monday evening. The side effects of Methotrexate include among other things, anemia. I don’t know if that’s what I have now. I only know that I feel like shit.
I had to call in to work this morning and take 8 hours of personal time. To say this has been frustrating is a complete understatement.
My hands are still a complete mess. They aren’t getting better. I don’t feel or see any improvement. They are still severely cracked and the skin on my fingers is hard and inflexible. Some days at work I can barely hold tools. Yesterday I was installing a ribbon cable into a connector when I noticed red marks on the ribbon cable. I quickly realized it was my own blood. One of the fissures on my hand had begun to bleed.
This actually happens a lot.
I’ve read that the worse place you can get psoriasis is the soles of your feet. When the skin cracks, it becomes painful to walk. I’m not disputing that, but I honestly believe the worse place to get it is on your hands. At least if it was on my feet, I would be wearing socks and shoes. Nobody could see it. I wouldn’t have the never ending fear of bleeding on something. I wouldn’t worry about situations where I am expected to shake someone’s hand. I wouldn’t worry about a sales person reacting with revulsion when they hand me my change. I am just getting extremely tired of it.
I want to stop taking the Methotrexate. It’s not even working. Even if it did work, it’s not a long term, permanent answer to psoriasis. I can not take Methotrexate forever. From what I can tell from reading the literature, it would eventually destroy my liver.
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What about wearing thin gloves? It’s an adhesive medical strip on a bullet wound, but you wouldn’t bleed on anything. People might think you’re strange, but they wouldn’t be grossed out.
I do wear cotton gloves most of the time. Some of the stuff I do at work I can’t wear cotton gloves. I have nitrile gloves, but I think they make my hands worse in the long run. My hands sweat when I wear them. I’m just dreading when it warms up and I can’t get away wearing gloves in public.
Mine is on my hands and feet. It’s a toss up which is worse. I think the feet, you can’t put shoes and socks on , it makes it worse. The hands can get pretty bad too. I had to go on disability about 5 years ago cause the feet got so bad I was going to be wheelchair (powered couldn’t use the manual) bound.
I also use methotrexate mainly because mine developed into psoriatic arthritis. I really don’t think it works that good, moving to south carolina from new york helped me the most. The cold seems to bother me.
Have you tried keeping a strong moisterizer like aquafor on the hands all night, that works better for me than all the prescriptions.
Sorry you’re having so many problems, I could not work like you do cause holding things makes it work. I wish you the best and hope it works out for you. Have you tried the biologics like enbrel or remicade, some of them work on ps.
Sorry to blab, i’m having serious insomnia but I wish sign off
Thanks for commenting Karen. I feel for you having in on your feet. I agree with you that having it on the feet would be worse.
I’m currently on Raptiva. It’s the second time I’ve been on it. The first time I was on it, it totally cleared it up. For the first time in years, my hands were psoriasis free. My primary care doctor refused to extend my referral to continue seeing my dermatologist so I lost my prescription for the Raptiva. By the time I found a new primary care doctor, got a new referral, and say my dermatologist, my psoriasis had returned. I now have it bad on the webbing between my index finger and my thumb on both hands. This is a bad place to get it. I can’t put bandages or band-aids on it, so it easily gets infected.