Day in the life healing from eczema

I thought I’d take you through a day in my life to show what it’s like having a chronic illness (eczema) and the ways I’m trying to heal and get through. I have improved a lot over the past few months and this is where I’m currently at in my healing – not totally debilitated anymore (thank god!) but not fully functioning yet either. Sort of at a weird halfway point.  If you’d like to see where I was a few months back when things were extremely BAD you can check out my other eczema posts here.

So at this point in my healing journey, these are my current symptoms: lots of edema still stuck in my hands (mostly right hand), limited mobility in right hand because of all the swelling, slight eczema and itchiness on my hands, and some fatigue. Definitely nowhere near as extreme and severe as it was a few months ago so I know I’m on the right healing track. My biggest issue right now is not so much eczema anymore but the edema stuck in my right hand; although not painful, it’s uncomfortable to have this hand locked in place with so much swelling and makes it so that I cannot use this hand to pick up a lot of things.

This is a day in the life for me right now on my eczema healing journey. I actually recorded this on March 6th, about a month ago, but am just getting around to posting it now. It takes me a long time to get posts up these days but I am trying!

By the way, I do not by any means think this is an “ideal” day in the life but this is just currently and truthfully where I’m at. Having a chronic illness is HARD and I’ve had to abandon so much of my former pre-illness routine!

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I wake up sometime between 7:30-8:30am usually. Today is a 7:30am day. I haven’t set alarms for myself since getting sick because my bedtime changes each night (you’ll see why as you read on) and I want to allow myself to get as much sleep as possible. Especially after not getting sleep for months during the worst of my eczema flares!

I do a quick scan of my hands when I wake up. This is how they’re looking today: 

My hands are typically not very itchy anymore for the bulk of the day and the skin has healed SO much. What an improvement from how they were in November! But as you can see in the pic, there’s quite a bit of swelling in my right hand, especially when I wake up. Believe it or not, the pic of my right hand is me stretching that hand to its max capacity. There’s so much edema that it just won’t open any further.

My boyfriend has already been up several hours before me and I usually wake up to him juicing in the kitchen or getting things ready for me. 

The first thing I see whenever I get out of bed is Meadow, my rabbit. She is hanging out in the living room but always runs to the bedroom gate to greet me when she sees me getting up.

I cuddle with Meadow for a few minutes when I first get up because she is always so eager for pets and hugs.

Then I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth and say good morning to my boyfriend in the kitchen who is busy prepping food for the day. During the worst of my eczema flares, he was literally making all my food and was nearly losing his mind from all the extra work this took. Now that I’ve healed to a certain extent, I’ve been able to help out more and take some of that off his plate. The main stuff he does for me now is wash all my greens and veggies for the day because I still cannot wash my hands under tap water. 

He has already prepared my lemon water for the morning so I start drinking that – 30 oz of lemon water every morning. 

My squirrel friend is here! There are a few squirrels who come to the kitchen window everyday for food but one in particular I really like because she takes food from my hands 🙂 She knows my voice and if I see her from far away, I will call to her and she comes running.

I am just SO thankful I can use my hands now! And do things out of bed! Just this very act of opening the window and taking some nuts out of a bag for a squirrel would have been impossible for me to do a few months back. Feeling grateful for improvement and healing and animal love. 

I sit with Meadow in the living room drinking my lemon water while she eats breakfast. For some reason I find it very calming to watch her eat and could sit here for a long time. Not sure if it’s just me or if there’s other weirdo pet owners out there who feel the same! It just makes me feel good seeing her enjoy her food. 

9am – My boyfriend heads out to work and I pull out my phone to check the damage for the day (aka emails and work load I’ve been assigned). I’m currently working as a freelance graphic designer and also part-time program manager. Holding down a job while being chronically ill and less than fully functional is really stressful for me. However, I am so thankful to be working from home. I have not been able to leave the house for the past 7 months and have barely been able to use my hands at all. Without a work from home job, I’d be out of work 100%. 

I check emails first, then Asana, an online project management app. I am one of those people who prefers to use a physical planner; however, after my hands got really bad I could no longer write and had to switch to scheduling things digitally. Still not my favorite but I’m very used to it now. 

I have things organized so I can clearly see my tasks for each day. Among today’s tasks: I have a bunch of emails to reply to and send out, some graphics to design, a call with a potential client to discuss possibly working together. And about a million other things to do🙈 Honestly most days I have a workload that exceeds the amount I’m capable of doing in one day so I just try to focus on getting done the most important & urgent tasks for the day. And the rest can wait. 

9:20am – I finish up my lemon water and set a timer for 20 minutes. This reminds me when it’s time to make my second drink for the day. As part of my healing protocol, I drink 2 fresh juices every morning on top of lemon water before eating any food. 

In the meantime I pull out my laptop and start working. I used to do all my work in bed during the worst of my eczema flares. I literally could not be out of bed for more than 10 minutes at a time and often was not even able to sit up for very long. Now I’m feeling well enough to be out of bed for longer stretches so I usually sit on the floor in the living room to work in the mornings, this way I can hang out with Meadow. 

My mornings are usually filled with some insane combo of working, playing with and chasing after Meadow who can sometimes be like a crazy toddler running through the house, and trying to stay on top of my juicing routine. In addition to just basically trying not to get too overwhelmed with all this going on. 

9:40am – Time to make my first green juice of the day.

I take a break to cuddle with Meadow a bit. Then back to emails. 

10am – Meadow is taking a snooze so I take this opportunity to sit in the sun in my room for a little bit. The sun and I are slowly becoming friends again. For a long time I have been a warm weather SUN-loving kind of person. But during my severe eczema flares last fall, being in the sun or any kind of remotely warm room did NOT feel good at all. The fact that I’m able to tolerate some heat and direct sunlight again is a great healing sign. 

It is now 10:30am, it has taken me a long time to finish my juice. I set a timer again for 20 minutes. By the way, I guess I can talk about this more in another post that’s more focused on healing foods but the reason why it’s important for me to have juices on an empty stomach and not eat or drink for a while after is to give the juice time to help clean out my lymph and other gunk in the body. Having food at the same time would hinder this process. 

11:00am – Second green juice is made! My green juices bring me alive. This is the part of my day when I’m generally feeling the best, the most energized and the most clear-headed. My hands are also at their best when I’m juicing and have no food in my stomach.

I always save some of whatever I’m juicing for Meadow.

My right hand is looking less swollen than when I first woke up. I think the green juices really help with bringing the edema down. I just wish all of it would go away instead of just some!

12pm – Meadow settles down in the pen for her nap. She usually sleeps all afternoon into the evening so I take this opportunity to close up the pen and focus on my stuff. This is when I get the bulk of my work done for the day once she goes to sleep. I feel like I can really relate to all the mothers out there whose schedule revolves around a young child. But I’m still so thankful for this one-on-one time with her – just a few months back I was so sick that none of this was possible. 

12:30pm – I am running behind and literally just getting started on making my first meal of the day. This unfortunately happens all the time! I get wrapped up in work and/or Meadow and don’t make food when I’m supposed to. Before I know it, 45 minutes or an hour has gone by, I am starving and need to eat RIGHT NOW.

I make a giant smoothie for breakfast. I have only just started doing this myself recently – for the past 7 months my boyfriend was making this for me every morning before he left for work because I could not use my hands. He would put my smoothie in two large thermos containers so I could just open and drink them. 

1pm – I head back to bed to eat my smoothie. This is where I pretty much live for the rest of the day. I will usually watch something while I eat. Currently I am obsessed with the show “The Grand Interior Design Challenge.” Have you seen this??? I am totally head over heels OBSESSED and feel like I learn so much about color and styling and cool design hacks from it. This show always makes me want to build and create furniture with my hands. In fact, I’ve set a goal for myself – whenever my hands are fully healed, I am going to learn wood-working.

Over the past year or so I’ve feel this huge call to work with natural materials and build something from scratch that is totally unique and raw and custom-designed. I think it’s amazing how someone who knows wood-working can put together a custom side table or shelf or chair that is created exactly how THEY want, for a fraction of the price that it would cost if purchased in a store. I mean talk about self-sufficiency! I think this is such a creative and useful skill to have. So that is my big goal once healed – to learn how to design/create my own furniture from natural materials.💜

1:30pm – Time to take my “medicine” — that is, supplements. I don’t take too many supplements anymore. There was a time when I was taking like 10 different supplements and did this everyday for many years. Now because of the severity of my eczema, I’ve really had to pare back because my body is sensitive and too many supplements create detox overload.  I take Milk Thistle to support my liver, B Complex and Vitamin C for healing, and Monolaurin for anti-viral support. Then I take a few others in the evening. 

3pm – I’ve been working for a few hours and am feeling kind of blah and brain-foggy. This happens a lot in the afternoons where I really just want to lay down and close my eyes and rest but I have SO MUCH WORK that still has to get done and it just keeps building. This is usually the point where I start to reassess how much I’m likely able to complete in 1 day and see what I can move around. 

I decide to take a break and have some fruit for a snack. Because of my condition and the fact that I developed adrenal fatigue from it, plus the viral fatigue I’m battling from Epstein Barr, I try not to go more than an hour or two without eating (except obviously in the mornings when I am juicing). But for the rest of the day right up until I go to bed, I try to eat frequently, grazing instead of eating 3 set meals.

4pm – After a lot of mental stress and struggle, I reluctantly decide to push a few of my to-dos to tomorrow or later in the week, the ones that can wait a little while longer. To be honest, I feel guilty All The Time for not doing enough – enough of what I think is expected of me and enough to match what a “normal” healthy person would get done in one day. It’s so hard because on the one hand I know I need to be gentle and understanding with my situation, that I am dealing with so much. And on the other, I feel like I nevertheless have to keep up or will lose work.

I haven’t actually told any of my clients or employers what I’m going through – they have no idea how sick I’ve been, the torture and pain I’ve gone through, the fact that for months I was typing emails to them with only one finger. The fact that every time I’ve done a live Zoom meeting with one of them it would require summoning all my strength to get myself looking presentable on camera for those 30 minutes or hour, that afterwards I would be knocked out for the rest of the day from pushing myself through this rock bottom experience to “be on.” These clients only see the final products of what I send them but have no idea the amount of struggle and tears and challenge I go through trying to get the work finished in a timely manner.

I feel very much like I’m living a lie, a double life – but I don’t dare tell them of my eczema and chronic illness because my intuitive feeling is that by doing so, I risk losing work. Unfortunately the reality for so many of us and especially the chronically ill is that the less you tell your clients or employer about any health or life challenges you face, the better. Otherwise your work and productivity starts being questioned. I have been in the unique position of being part of upper management in past jobs and seeing firsthand the real behind-the-scenes reactions from management when employees open up about a personal challenge; how the wheels start turning as soon as someone reveals a personal problem which could affect their work. I’m no stranger to where these situations can easily lead and it’s really unfortunate. Not to totally go off on a tangent here… I just feel this is a huge issue and only getting worse as chronic illness becomes more prevalent. 

4:30pm – I’m feeling hungry again so I take another break to make some “healthy” fries. Healthy because they are baked and without the use of oil or salt. Basically I just slice up a bunch of potatoes, sprinkle them with garlic powder and bake them in the oven. You might think this sounds boring but to me it tastes decadent and indulgent and is kind of a highlight meal of the day for me. I used to be mostly a raw foodist (90% raw vegan) but for the past 5 months per my doctor’s orders, I’ve been eating more cooked food in the form of potatoes in order to slow the detox response in my body.

Eczema is a really weird illness to understand – it’s a condition that in order to heal often has to get worse before it gets better because toxins have no choice but to exit through the skin. I don’t want to stop the detox process completely but just want to slow it down so my hands don’t get overrun in eczema like a few months ago. So a plateful of healthy fries with some avocado is perfect for this. 

5:45pm – The sun is starting to go down. I stop eating and do a short meditation in front of the window as the sun sets. This is just my little reminder of the day to stop whatever I’m doing, say a healing prayer and get in a short meditation (I’m talking really short, like 3 minutes). I’d like to do more but still have a lot on my plate for the rest of the day. 

6:15pm – Still working but I’m laying down in bed now with my laptop propped up. I am feeling very fatigued and know Meadow is going to be waking up soon, so I decide to close my eyes for just a little bit. I end up falling asleep for about 20 minutes or so. For me, around this time of day is the WORST in terms of fatigue. 

7:15pm – Meadow is awake now so I open up the pen to let her out and we spend a while cuddling again.

I do not feel like doing anymore cooking! However, I have to make dinner and it’s really important that I get in certain specific foods everyday. So reluctantly I head into the kitchen. The late afternoon into evening always is the hardest part of the day for me. I just feel DONE for the day but there is still so much more to do before I can finally lay down. I am dragging, the heat is blasting in the house and it is so HOT.

For dinner I’m having sort of a raw soup/salad mix of sorts. This is a raw vegan green soup that I’ve blended up made of spinach, tomatoes, orange, ginger, etc. And then I add some mixed greens just because I personally like to have some texture and stuff to chew on. I like blending up greens to eat because I’m able to fit in a large amount of greens, much more than I would probably eat if I had to chew this all. This soup contains about 5 or 6 cups of raw spinach!

I make the soup and pull out some leftover potatoes in the fridge to snack on. Then sit in the living room to keep Meadow company and eat. She will usually curl up next to me and take a nap.

The green soup is reviving and I’m feeling more alert and peppy now.

8:30pm – My boyfriend is finally home! Such a relief. I am very happy to head back to bed now that someone else is here to swap places with me and bunny-sit. I feel a little bad saying that – it’s not that Meadow is a burden, it’s just a lot to fully be present with her and take care of myself right now.

I go back to bed while my boyfriend aka hero cleans up the kitchen, makes Meadow’s dinner and makes some baked sweet potatoes for me to eat later. 

9:15pm – My day is still far from over. My boyfriend starts boiling water for my hand soaking routine. At this point some areas on my hands are feeling a little itchy so I’m really glad to soak them as this always brings relief.

My hand soaking routine has changed a few times over the last few months but right now I’m doing a 10 minute soak in ice cold water, then immediately switching to hot epsom salt water for 20 minutes, then switching back to ice cold water for another 10 minutes. It’s a process that takes close to an hour in total to complete. This protocol came from my natural doctor – basically the idea behind it is to try to shift the stuck lymph fluid in my hands so that it finally releases. We’ve tried a bunch of things and so far nothing is working to clear out the edema. It’s been 6 months and it just does not want to budge. But I’m hopeful. I know healing takes time and patience and lots of rest (which I am not really getting enough of but am doing my best with the circumstances I have). At the very least, the epsom salt soaking helps to pull toxins out of my skin and the ice water kind of zaps any remaining eczema itch out of my hands, bringing a lot of relief. 

9:30pm – The hand soaking routine begins. I put on a show to watch while soaking my hands so I have something to keep me distracted for the next hour, while my boyfriend prepares and brings me the 3 rounds of soaking water.

10:30pm – Hand soaking routine is finished and my boyfriend is heading to bed. He is exhausted too from trying to take care of everyone. I’m now applying my honey aloe mixture to my hands so my skin doesn’t dry out. This is just the first coat – I have to apply this several more times before I go to bed so that it lasts throughout the night. I’ll apply the next coat in about 20 minutes or so. 

10:45pm – I am starving now – STARVING! The hand soaking routine always floods my body with adrenaline. Even though the soaking feels great, it’s still a stressful experience on my body, so I need food right now! I pull out the sweet potatoes that my boyfriend has made, still warm from the oven, and drizzle tons of maple syrup on top. My bf has also made a healing herbal tea for me and another 30oz glass of lemon water (my end of the day hydration routine). I spend the next 30 minutes or so basically gorging. 

11:15pm – Time to make Meadow’s after-dinner snack where I sneak in all her vitamins for the day. My boyfriend usually makes this but I have recently taken on the task to try to help him out as it’s one less thing he has to stay up and do when he gets home.

11:50pm – Lemon water is finished. Meadow and I spend a little bit more time playing before I close up the pen for the night. Then the rush starts. I am trying to finish up for the night so I can get to bed soon.  My goal is always to get to bed before midnight but it literally only happens like once a month. I brush my teeth, then put on a third and fourth coat of the honey aloe mixture.

12:30am – I am finally DONE for the day and collapse in bed. 12:30am bedtime is not bad… some days I don’t get to sleep until after 1am or even 2. I would LOVE to find a way to start getting to bed earlier in the future, just not sure how as part of my routine is dependent on my boyfriend’s availability. To a certain extent, I am on his schedule. I do another quick healing prayer and meditation for the night before falling asleep. 

And that’s a day in my life healing from eczema! Kind of crazy, yeah?! But I hope by sharing, this can help others with eczema or chronic illness feel a little less alone. Managing a chronic illness is anything but easy but you just do the best you can with what you have, celebrate the small improvements and wins as they come, and keep focusing on getting better.

If you have a chronic illness, I’d love to know if your daily routine is at all similar to mine. Let me know what works for you!