3 months ago, I saw my dermatologist to discuss a really bad flare-up with my autoimmune condition. Of course, at the time I finally got to my appointment, my flare-up wasn’t as bad as it had been. But even when it’s not bad, it’s still seen on my skin. So even though I had been previously diagnosed and done some one-off treatments in the past, the appointment earlier this year was the first time my current dermatologist had confirmed the diagnosis and started to help create a plan to see what will work for me.
There are a lot of options to try to treat this condition, but none of them are guaranteed to work. Some people react well to one medication or another. Some people need surgery. Sometimes one medication will work well for a while and then it won’t work anymore. And some of these medications can make you immunocompromised. That’s something to worry about in normal times, but now it’s even scarier. Even with me being fully vaccinated, I don’t want to be on anything that would make me at a higher risk for being a breakthrough case.
So at my last appointment, I was put on 2 different medications. One was a broad-spectrum antibiotic that I’ve been put on before. When I went to urgent care about a year ago for a bad flare, that’s what they put me on to make things better. But I usually have only been on that antibiotic for maybe a week or two. And this time, I was going to take a higher dose and take it twice a day. The other medication I was put on was to help with some side effects that the antibiotic can cause, so even though it wasn’t something that would necessarily help my autoimmune condition, it was something new to add to my medication routine.
And I’ve been following my dermatologist’s instructions to the letter these past 3 months. I wanted to give this the best chance I could because it would be the easiest solution for me. And it would be amazing if it ended up being the first thing we tried that got me into remission or as close to remission.
Over the past 3 months, I’ve stayed hopeful but I really didn’t think things were getting better. It’s not easy to tell, but I didn’t notice a huge difference in the flares I was getting. And the pain caused by the flares seem to stay at the same level no matter how bad things are, so I can’t really judge by the pain.
So when I went into my follow-up last week, I told my dermatologist that I didn’t think things were that much better for me. He asked me to guess how much better, and I said I thought it was maybe 5% better. But he took a look at the area that has the worst flare-ups and he said that it looked significantly better than that. He said he would guess maybe 25-30% improvement! The worst area isn’t the easiest for me to look at (it’s on my upper thighs) and I didn’t think of taking photos to see progress so I really had no clue it was improving that much! But because of how this antibiotic works, a lot of the improvement would have been right away so if that was all I needed to take I should have seen much better results.
But since this medication is helping, my dermatologist wanted me to stay on it (plus the medication I take for the side effects). And he said he wanted to add another medication to the plan. The new medication is usually used for very different issues like high blood pressure (I actually have very low blood pressure) or kidney issues. But it can also affect some hormones in your body that can make the flares not as bad (different hormones than regular female hormones that fluctuate every month). Just like any medication, there are side effects, but from what I have been able to look up they aren’t too bad. The biggest one is that you can get dehydrated easier than normal because it can pull water from your body. I used to overhydrate myself, so I think this might not be too much of an issue for me.
The only downside to this new medication is that it will take a while to know if it helps me. It usually will take 3-6 months before you know if it’s working. That’s a long time, but at least I’m already able to manage the flares a bit with the antibiotic that I’m on. So I’m not as desperate to see results. So the plan is for me to come back in another 3 months for another follow-up to see if there are any results and to make sure that any side effects I’m having aren’t causing me too many issues.
While I would have loved a better result, I think this is still a pretty good step in the right direction. And hopefully, it’s just a matter of time before things get even better. There is still a surgery that my dermatologist feels is a very good option for me, but if I can get things under control a bit more I might have a better result. And I’m not in any rush to get surgery. The only reason I would want to do it soon would be if I was told that was the only thing that would help me. But for now, I’m just continuing to take the medications I was prescribed and hope that my next follow-up will have even better results.
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Pushing Through Feeling Off (or Hopefully This Doesn’t Last For 3 Months)
Avoiding Something I Should Be Doing (or Scared Of What I’ll Find Out)
Feeling Sick Just Isn’t Fun (or I Was Already Doing Nothing)
Some More Virtual Therapy (or Trying Another Medication)
Almost Giving It A Full Try (or Ending Things Early)
