Psoriasis makes me look like The Edge

The last few days have been a pretty downer. Not sure why but part of it has been my new scalp psoriasis treatment. If I have not mentioned it before I have psoriasis. Many people do not know exactly what psoriasis is so let me clarify. If you have psoriasis then your skin (or at least parts of it) grows about five times as fast as other people's skin. Since everyone's skin grows and flakes off in microscopic pieces and you completely shed your entire skin about every month or so those of us with psoriasis can do that on parts of our skin (plaques) in about an hour. I can seriously say that I can scrape off some of the skin and an hour later it will be back. 

I have had this since I was about 42 or 43. It's hereditary. My grandfather and one of my brother's has it. So I have been fighting it for more than 13 years. And not very well. It gets better and it gets worse. At the end of November I got totally fed up, ditched my current dermatologist (who was an idiot) and found a new one and I can now say that the man is a miracle worker. At the end of November I would say that I had psoriasis plaques over about 30% of my body and in my scalp. As of today, I have NONE other than my scalp. 

I have been doing narrow band UV light treatments three times a week at Group Health in Seattle for almost all of November and December and it works. THANK YOU GOD and Dr. Green. But my scalp (because the light doesn't get to it) is still giving me problems. I did try some medicine for the entire time I was doing the light treatment but it didn't work too well. So when I met with Dr. Greene last week he suggested we try something new with my scalp.

So now, for six hours a day minimum, I have to put stuff in my hair and then wear a shower cap to keep it moist and warm. It's really fun as my scalp itches like crazy when I have it on. Thank God I work at home and can wear the shower cap in the morning when I am hear alone. Some people wear it at night but I sleep so lousy now that doing that would only make it worse. So I have elected to wear it from 6:00 in the morning when I finish my workout until just after lunch. And it's not fun and it really puts me in a bad mood. And this week I have had people coming by to service things here at the house so I got a ski cap to wear when people come by. Kathleen decided it makes me look like The Edge. (If you don't know The Edge, he is the guitarist for U2). 

So that brings me to my bad mood this week. It's hard to concentrate on work when your scalp is itching like you have poison oak. It's the pits. Today I had a lot of non-computer work to do and that seemed to help. I packaged and shipped my newsletters today and that keeps me busy enough on menial tasks to ignore the itching. Which brings me to today, which was a good day! Now maybe I can sleep tonight.