World Day not to give up.

Every October 29th is World Psoriasis Day. I have known since I contracted that disease, five years ago.

It came in the height of summer. I was halfway between the satisfaction of a completed high school and the blinding horizons of college life. It was the month of August when inexplicable burning attacks the skin of my thighs, worryingly close to the genital area, followed by redness and the appearance of a rough, scaly surface.

From the beginning I assumed that I should not scratch the affected places, but the intense itching prevented me from resisting. In a matter of days, my rashes practically turned into burns. The first treatment employed was my insistence on maintaining a positive state of mind, both to encourage my family and myself.

My bed woke up covered with small pieces of fallen skin during sleeping, as the discomfort forced me to move even in a state of unconsciousness. The sheets, stained by the liquid that secreted the living flesh. My body was literally marked by an invasive force that grew, sometimes wet, sometimes dry.

I had to stop wearing shorts and briefs in the privacy of the house, I let the hours pass with a fan directed towards my thighs. To clean myself, they recommended the use of a product as difficult to acquire as bath gel. To dry myself, I needed up to two and three towels, since some were always stained with blood and pus.

Doctors were initially unable to determine which dermatological disease was the problem. I still remember the shame experienced by being examined naked by so many male and female doctors! from the Comandante Faustino Pérez hospital, repeatedly.

The fact of applying various types of ointments or remedies such as the decoction of guava leaves, far from contributing to an improvement, spread the sores more quickly and increased the pain. A biopsy, the first and only one that I remember, named the torment that had altered our daily lives: psoriasis.

My most common doubts were summarized in the following: Will it be a matter of few or many in the world? Is it one of those pathologies that require many years of research ahead? Will I ever see myself as before? Will I stay like this forever?

While using Hydrocortisone and flower drops as traditional natural medicine, I undertook a search for information that could not help but be moved.

I learned that those who suffer from psoriasis have been stigmatized historically, from ancient times, where they were taken for lepers to the present day, some persisting in the belief that it constitutes a contagious evil. Nothing is further from reality.

I discovered that it is a chronic psychosomatic illness, which I interpreted as an example of the control that the brain professes over the rest of our being. In other words, the reflection on the skin of what exerts a negative influence on the mind.

A factor as damaging as stress, perhaps accumulated throughout a school year for various reasons, could have been the trigger for my psoriasis outbreak.

Gaping I read that the hands, the head, the elbows, the nails, the abdomen or the back are some of the dissimilar areas of my anatomy where it could have appeared. Perhaps, due to a certain benevolence, it was limited to the area around the pelvis and armpits.

I was moved to discover that there is a special day to pay tribute without limits to those who fight against this condition, as well as to understand that current times, so complex and hectic, seem to have intensified the phenomenon among thousands of people anywhere in the world.

In the same way, I was reassured to know that the World Health Organization has promoted scientific research for years, in addition to raising awareness about psoriasis and understanding towards those who support it. Bravo for them! I think every time I remember that entire year of uncertainty, of which I keep two special memories.

One is implicit in the marks that psoriasis left on my skin, which from their silence warn me not to allow stress to take over my instincts again. The other is the satisfaction I felt knowing I was supported by my family, friends and doctors, despite the heartbreaking onslaught of my illness.

Tamara Caridad Mesa González

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