Good news this week, forehead and back of head have improved noticeably. I keep running my hands over it all day, I can’t believe it’s actually starting to feel smooth. It’s been a good week for me. I’ve even been going to the gym without a bandana/hoodie sometimes.

I know at a point like this it’s easy to get complacent and I’ve been feeling that, so I’ve had to make extra effort to stay focused. I actually bought a sugary iced tea last week after the gym and drank the whole thing, and afterwards I just laughed at how stupid it was. Like, you’re not even healed yet! What are you doing! So since then I’ve been making sure to push myself harder every day and remind myself that even though I’ve made progress, I still have work to do.

For example the other day, I had 4km on my run schedule, so I got on the treadmill and I was walking for the first half km getting my headphones working. I was kind of tired that day so I said to myself maybe I won’t reset the meter, so I only need to run 3.5km to hit my 4km for the day.

Then after a few seconds I said to myself “WHAT THE ****!!!! How can you even think that! You’re trying to beat TSW and you’re going to let yourself cheat on your tiny little run!? Just for that, you can run 6km today instead.” I ran the 6km, and felt invincible afterwards.

After 2 weeks, I can say the sauna has been a game changer. The amount of water I lose in there is just ridiculous. I make sure to stand up in the sauna so I can feel the sweat dripping onto my feet and it’s like a waterfall. I close my eyes and every drip I feel I say to myself, “that’s all the steroid CRAP leaving my body.” I’ve been going to the sauna every day after the gym and I would guess I sweat around 800ml to 1000ml each time.

I always make sure to push myself in the sauna too. When it starts feeling horrible in there, I force myself to stay in for one more song. Then I get out, take a rest, and go back in for round 2 or 3. Sometimes, the sauna is harder work than the gym! The other day this guy with a big pot belly got in the sauna, I told myself – he’s not even in shape and he doesn’t have TSW, so you are not allowed to get out until he does! He stayed in forever and I nearly died in there 😅😅

However, the reward comes when I go home and look in the mirror. My forehead is all super dried up and flaking, and by next morning it’s all new pink skin underneath. That process used to take 3-4 days, but with the amount of water I can remove in the sauna, I seem to shed a new layer every 24 hours.

Losing so much sweat in the gym and sauna each day, my diet has improved a lot. I eat as much as I want now, in fact, I’ve totally stopped monitoring my water intake. My last food journal entry was 8th July. I don’t even think of NMT as having a “drinking limit” now. I just think of it as “trying to remove water from the body”. You can either do that by drinking less or sweating more, and to me, sweating more makes much more sense.

I have had some flares on my arms, but they are like 10% of what my initial flares were, and they heal up in around 48 hours. In a way they’re good, because when I look at them I think back to those miserable runs in June when all my skin was broken and it stung like hell to just sweat a tiny bit. I told myself it would all be worth it if I just powered through. Here we are 6 weeks later and everything’s changed. Hard work heals 💪🙏

Some pics: