New mum. Kiri, 31 from Derbyshire, who sufferrs from with severe hand psoriasis and didn't want to use steroids on her hands in case she got the cream on her baby's skin had to wear socks on her hands in order to nurse her newborn baby as they were so cracked and painful.
Kiri was in complete agony and despair until she discovered a solution for her hand psoriasis with Oregon Rescue Serum which cleared her hands in a matter of weeks and allowed her to hold her young son's hands again.
Kiri says;
“My psoriasis first broke out when I was pregnant with my second son. It started off kind of manageable but over the months went from bad to worse and I was eventually referred to a dermatologist.
I still don’t know what triggered my psoriasis as no one in my family has it so it wasn’t genetic. I’m worried that now it has started with me that it might be passed on to my sons.
I’ve been prescribed numerous strong steroid creams for my hand psoriasis, which after a while began to thin and damage the skin on my hands. I’ve also been prescribed other topical creams for my hands, Betnovate, Eumovate, Enstillar, Dovobet just to name a few.
To add to my stress after giving birth to my second son I was really worried about touching him if I had any trace of such steroid creams on my hands. But then if I didn’t use the creams my hands were so painful and sore I found it hard to change my baby or wash him. It was a really awful experience because when you have a very young baby, you need to always be touching them and I had these dry cracked bleeding hands all the time, and any form soaps or baby wipes on them felt like acid.
It got so bad I had to wear socks on my hands with the toe cut off so that my hands didn’t come into contact with anything, My finger nails began to crumble and I ended up losing four nails completely. I had to wear plasters on the ends of all my fingers.
I couldn’t change my baby’s nappy or get him dressed without help, I was in so much pain. I had no strength in my hands either as psoriasis makes your joints swollen and painful so I found it hard to even pick things up.
If I had to do food shopping, I wore long sleeves and I made my partner pay so I didn’t have to pass money over because on a few occasions I had paid I saw the cashier’s face when they saw my hands and they would put the money on the counter rather than handing it to me.
Even my oldest son said he didn’t want to hold my hands as they felt horrible. Then just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse my hair started falling out when the psoriasis spread and I began to suffer frmo scalp psorisis too.
I’ll admit there were a few times I just didn’t want to carry on. I had days that I simply I couldn’t get out of bed. It was a godsent that my partner was on furlough at the time as with a toddler and a baby to look after I don’t know how I would have got through that period on my own.
Thankfully a small glimmer of light appeared at the end of the tunnel when I was researching alternatives to steroids, which I didn’t want to keep on using as they were causing so much damage, and I came across a UK skincare range for psoriasis called Oregon Skincare.
They had an intensive serum for very sore cracked hard to heal patches of psoriasis which contained a plant-based ingredient called Oregon Grape Root that helped supress skin cell turnover but yet contained no chemicals and, most importantly for me, no steroids.
I looked up lots of reviews on the products and they were clearly from real psoriasis sufferers and a lot of them were saying the product had worked better or the same as steroids but without the risks. I felt convinced enough to try the serum. I also had a bit more trust as all the products were made in the UK. That was in November last year.
I started noticing a difference quite quickly when I began using the Oregon Rescue Serum. My hands didn’t feel as dry and the patches of sore cracked and raised skin started getting smaller by the end of the first week.
Over the following weeks the psoriasis patches got smaller and my hands got smoother. They were still red and tender all over but it felt like the flaring patches were no longer active and my hands started to feel less raw and painful.
The serum also wasn’t greasy like other products I had tried which were awful and went all over my clothes. So it was easy to use this serum several times a day and it didn’t sting when I applied it.
I’ve now been using the serum for just over two months and my hands feel softer, clearer and are no longer painfully dry and cracked. The visible scales have more or less gone.
I still get flare ups but I have worked out a routine where I can now feel a flare coming on and I start preparing my skin in advance and this is where the Oregon products work so well. I use the Oregon Maintenance Cream daily which is more of a moisturiser and then I start using the stronger serum whenever I feel the first sign of a flare happening. I also use their Oregon Anti-Plaque Shampoo which has the same ingredient in it and that is doing a great job of keeping my scalp psoriasis under control and my hair has started to grow back too.
I’m so glad I found these products. They have totally transformed my life. Since using them I’ve become much more positive as I feel that I can now manage my psoriasis, rather than it totally controlling my life. If I ever get a really bad flare I think I will probably still have to resort to using steroids for a short period to treat it. But so far that has not happened yet and these products are definitely having a preventative effect where by my flares are less often and much less severe that they were. ”
