This past week I have finally entered my second flare. It took so long to eventuate I thought I may have escaped it, but not so lucky.

It actually started the week before but it only developed into a full on flare up this week. The biggest problem area is my neck and chest, which are very angry. My back and torso are not too bad and probably look normal(ish) in the photos, but they are definitely playing up. Surprisingly my forehead which was the biggest problem area before is relatively unscathed. My face is flaking a lot, but not really reddening.

As you can see it is not even comparable to my first flare up, if my first flare up was a 7/10, this one is probably a 4 or 5. But still, it is uncomfortable. I’m attacking it with a strict 1,000ml limit and fasting from all food for a few days. That settled things down pretty quickly during my first flare so let’s hope it repeats!

One thing I noticed was all the old symptoms returned, suddenly I was having night sweats again and having trouble sleeping, and those crazy chills! It’s an odd problem to deal with because your body is letting out all this heat so you’re freezing cold. But also because you’re letting out heat, you can’t cover yourself up otherwise it becomes like a sauna and you start sweating. So nights are just a game of switch between freezing cold and burning hot 😅

I will say that I did fall off the NMT wagon for a bit and started eating and drinking more than I should. Not sure if that had much to do with this setback but probably. I felt like I was 80% healed a few weeks ago, now it feels more like 50%. Just a reminder that this healing is not linear. It’s up and down, but as long as the general trend is up, that’s all we can hope for.

I do need to travel at the end of this week for 7 days so I’m dreading that a bit, but we’ll figure that out when it comes.

Update you all in a week!

B

Some photos: