This is the story of a girl who had lost hope, and who by now lived with herpetiform dermatitis first, and then atopic dermatitis, for 30 years.
With allergic asthma from an early age, at 21 I discovered that I was celiac, after three / four years of swelling / bad mood / stomachache but above all dermatitis.
I take it well, even if being enjoyable and jovial does not help a life of restrictions. Then the umpteenth blow: the allergy to chocolate, chilli, curry. Another list of allergens to memorize. An unbearable itch, which forced me to put on cotton gloves, tied at the wrists with paper tape.
I remove food and perfumes, I remove detergents and softeners, those with a cotton scent. The situation obviously, on a very strict diet according to the protocols of the Italian Celiac Association, improves, but the itching remains. And nothing, if during the day I could contain it, at night I was going wild. It didn’t matter that whoever slept with me tried to hold me by the arms, I was always scratching and frantically. All my joints have been flayed for 30 years. Wrists, inner elbow, knee, under the buttock, the neck, the hairline … I’m a sportswoman, and I was used to being asked what my skin was about x times a week in the gym when I forgot myself of the wounds I was carrying. My family, my friends, my arrears who in the meantime have changed have, all with equal patience, spent unimaginable amounts in remedies of all kinds: from olive oil to be dabbed, to aloe made by cloistered nuns, to it: the king, cortisone. Cortisone which clearly soothes the sore, but can do nothing about itching. As a poliallergic, I consumed boxes of antihistamines such that I could buy a garage in the central area of an average city. Until, under the last Christmas, my gastroenterologist makes the umpteenth test: specific lactic ferments and then Butyrose. I buy it without no emotion, as one stamps the card on the Wednesday morning of a midseason. Now I even tell myself fairy tales about my wounds and the fact that in summer, in costume, they make me marbled like a Dalmatian. But I see the looks of those who love me, who linger a few seconds longer than they should. I still scratch when I’m stressed or nervous, but I’ve lost the habit of it. In a month and a half I have new skin. With years of scarring, but new. I can even put on the “normal” cream and not from the pharmacy, I even used a scented oil once. Who wants to look at me now, and, simply, who does not want no. It is believed, since ancient times, that the skin, being the first contact between man and nature, between man and the environment, between man and others, has a deeper value than any organ. Our first barrier and our first contact. I am like a child touching the snow for the first time.
Thank you so much Butyrose.
Elena, 31 yo, Udine