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Monday 3 March 2014

A letter to a fellow TSW recovery friend

Going through the recovery, it's very normal that your skin hurts, remember it is completely broken, so the pain is a mixture of inflammation and dry skin.

Inflammation: The redness in your skin is inflammation that the body is creating because of the damage caused by the steroids.  This is what is making you both really tired and really uncomfortable.  This takes a long time to heal, but it will go down and you can minimise the impact by using cold packs and drinking lots of water + using: cod liver oil + primerose oil + moisturiser.

Dry Skin: Your body is creating new skin cells as fast as it can because all of the ones on your body are damaged.  This should create a top layer of very dry, damaged skin on top, and very new fragile skin below.  This is uncomfortable and it takes time to fix itself.

Painkillers and sleeping pills are your friends.  I took quite a lot of them for the first 4 or 5 months of recovery.  I also minimised my activity to really just watch movies and take very small walks around my house.  I also showered and bathed, but only for very short periods of time.

Warning: Do not take long baths, you will be way too tender afterwards.  No more than a few minutes.


Finally, this is a game of mental toughness.  If you can focus on the end goal and not worry about the current, then it becomes a million times easier.  Imagine a marathon runner pounding the pavement... do you think he likes running, the gut wrenching pain, of course not, but he focuses on his goal and pushes through it for the ultimate victory.  In our case, we just have to get to the end goal (set yourself a timeline to focus on).  What you will see is that the days tick by and soon you are 6 months in and feeling great, then a year, then two years and you can't remember being sick

My friend Michelle is now about 6 or 8 months into recovery and she looks so good.  You wouldn't know anything was wrong with her, and she is back to exercising and loving life.  She had all the same questions that I get emailed daily, but she focused on the goal (with a little ass kicking from me), and now she is happy as ever.  You can do this to.  You go girl!!

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