Flares

A few more days along and things haven’t gotten much rosier The skin on her face is getting steadily worse and we’re at a loss as to what may be the cause. We still haven’t gotten around to introducing the fish oil supplement in light of not being able to spot if it causes a flare ….because she’s already having a flare >.<

it's all very frustrating!

We're having a lot of building work done in the house at the moment and there is a considerable of dust being thrown about and general messyness. This could be a factor, we just don't know. We're also having a new heating system put in and we're without any heating just now, always nice when we're coming into December! hehe.

The flare seems to concentrate on her face and I'm desperately hoping it's not going to spread across her body again. Jasmine has also been off her food for the last week or so, and is also hinting at the beginnings of another cold.

We wait with baited breath.

Fructooligosaccharides

A quick call to Biocare (the manufacturer of the probiotics) and they have confirmed that the Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) present in both the probiotics is a derivative of chickory. So we’re clear on the potato front which was only used as a flavour agent …for the banana flavor ! lol

icky…

We’re a couple of nights into adding the new bifido bacterium and acidophilus pro biotics to Jasmine’s evening milk. A couple of days before this we reintroduced oats into her diet, mainly in the form of oat milk (mixed with rice milk to start with) and as oat cakes/biscuits for a low Gi, high protein snack just before bed.

She had seemed fine with the introduction of the oats, though I understand any negative effects can take more than a couple of days before they show themselves. Things seemed to have taken a little turn for the worse now though. I collected her from the childminder and was promptly informed that Jasmine had been a poo machine all day, runny and generally icky. To top it all off her bum was red raw as her skin seems to have reacted to the toxic mess coming out of her. She was naturally more upset than usual and sitting down in the bath was a big no no!

Waitrose’s Baby Bottom Butter came to the rescue as this goes on very nicely without causing too much friction/discomfort for her. We’ve also found that it seems to easily calm down any episode of nappy rash Jasmine seems to suffer and she has only ever had very mildly.

Jasmine has had an odd bowel routine since starting the oats but we just assuming it was her digestive system adjusting to the new food. So we’ve a funny tummy, sore bum, and a couple of suspicious recent additions to her diet. She was on infantis bifido for a while before jumping to the ‘grown-up’ one along with the acidophilus so the acidophilus in my eyes is a likely canditate. Now, we’d had issues with this before but we’ve put that down to it containing a potato derivative in its make up. This one (and the ‘grown-up’ bifido) contain only the bacteria and Fructooligosaccharides (F.O.S.) and we just have to identify the source of the FOS.

On the off chance I did the ‘finger-test’ for teething aswell and she certainly gnawed more on her right side over the left. I’m by no means convinced teething is a canditate for this upset, but the nappy area is very reminiscent of a ‘teething nappy.’

On top of all this she is appearing generally more itchy and the eczema on her face seems to be enlarging and we’re watching very closely for signs of outbreaks spreading across the rest of her body again.

She refused to drink any of her evening bottle this evening though did manage the pre-bedtime snacks. It could well be another long night ahead =]

possible progress

It’s been such a long time in a seemingly static phase of Jasmine’s eczema treatment that updating the blog hasn’t hit top priority. However, we’ve recently seen our naturopath and homeopath and have forged a new routine that we’re on the verge of incorporating.

Following the usual summary of Jasmine’s gut activity over the last month or so our naturopath felt it was time to up the vitamins and probiotics and forge ahead with the omega 3 supplements (something she has been saying for a while though we’ve just not had the opportunity to incorporate given jasmine’s cold for the last month). We’ve decided to try Jasmine back on the oat milk and though we’re only a couple of days in to this inclusion it seems to be settling okay. She’s dow receiving 2 5ml spoonfuls of her multi-vitamin every morning in a bid to get her selenium levels up. This gives her roughly 16micrograms where we aiming to get to 32 micrograms, so we’re trying to supplement the remainder naturally through her diet with the likes of brown rice. We’re upgrading to the non-infant version of the bifido bacterium and have sourced an acidophilus supplement that doesn’t contain potato which should hopefully arrive before the week is out. Our last addition to the dietary regime will be an omega 3 supplement. Now, we know that this can be sourced through flax and/or fish oils but we’ve opted to go with the fish as this is apparently better. Flax has it’s benefits in Jasmine’s case as there is a reasonable chance she could be allergic to the fish oils …we’ll know soon enough >.<

We're just going to give it a couple more days with just adding oats to her routine to establish that she has no ill-effects and then we'll add the others. I'm not sure if we'll add them one at a time yet and assess the impact. It seems the most logical, though we're got the pressure of understanding that her body needs these nutrients just as soon as it can get them!

Steph and Grandma undertook the journey down to London again to see the homeopath. Jasmine had great fun on the train and thankfully wasn't as energetic as the last trip being more content to stay in her seat! Generally the homeopath was happy with the progress Jasmine had made though expressed concern over the diet and the level of nutrients she's receiving, particularly calcium. Based on Jasmine's developing nature the homepath has prescribed Pulsatilla (2 balls daily) in addition to the Mixed Allergens (3 balls on Monday, Wednesday and Friday) we were on before. In addition to this she also prescribed 'mixed bowel nosode' (polybowel 30c 15mls), a short term high potency remedy to address any potential gut issues Jasmine may have. This was only taken over 24 hours (a 5ml spoon for a consecutive evening, morning and evening).

She is still acting up throughout the night and we're trying to tackle that by having a last minute snack just before bed. We're very early into this part of the routing and we're kind of scrabbling around trying to identify would will work best for her in a bid to keep her asleep longer. We've tried sweetcorn, porridge, raisins, chicken, banana and the usual rice cakes, none of which seem to have any advantageous effect so far. Ultimately we're aiming for food that hits the 'high protein, low Gi' mark and I don't think we're there yet. Oats seem to be the ultimate and despite the on and off gluten status of oats we're trying to phase them into her diet. Our naturopath suggests a combination of an oatcake and chicken, with peanut butter ideally – but we daredn't tackle peanuts yet!

Coasting…

October was a thin month in so far as updates on Jasmine’s eczema were concerned. Not a great deal has changed since the last update a couple of weeks ago. Her skin still seems to be on a roller-coaster ride of good and bad patches and the nights are still interupted and relatively restless.

Everyone is still suffering with a nasty cold. Jasmine has had hers for a full 3 weeks now and though her general demeanor isn’t massively effected she is still a snotty mess and her body must be tired of fighting this thing off. The odd observation is that her skin does improve when she is fighting something else off. The doctors dismiss this claiming the body is busy fighting something other than the eczema and thus doesn’t exhibit the body response typical of Jasmine’s various allergies/intolerances. The suspicious fact remains that she is still eating the same foods as before said illnesses, her bowel habits don’t appear massively different and the day to day activities are pretty much the same. So her body is still ‘coping’ with the diet just not ‘reacting’ …yet when it’s not busy with something else she’s a mess. It just doesn’t quite wash.

We’re still not sure if teething is involved. She’s had a few bouts of fever and despite our hesitancy we succumbed to using calpol to try and make our bundle of snot that little bit more comfortable.

We’ve a busy week ahead with meetings with our naturopath and the homeopath down in London. Maybe someone will be able to enlighten us.

Flaring :(

We’ve decided to re-introduce the bifido bacterium supplement in light of the fact that Jasmine’s skin has gotten progressively worse over the last week or so. Now, it could be one of the negative cycles, it could be teething, it’s probably a lot to do with her cold, but something certainly isn’t right. We’ve noticed that when not using the bifido supplement she passes solids very irregularly, i.e. occasionally a full 24 hours between stools. The ‘rings’ on her cheeks and thighs have shown no real sign of improvement since we started the Daktarin cream and if anything they could be a little worse. Jasmine is generally more itchy all over now, and we seem to have regressed a few months as to the itch vs skin condition. We didn’t use the Daktarin this morning for fear it could be making things worse.

Nights continue to be very hard work and she’s averaging 5 or 6 visits a night to resettle her. Mostly she resettles very well, though sometimes we feel the best thing for her is to join us in our bed.

I should also note the water softener eczema trial has come to a close and we had the softener removed last Friday, whether this may contribute to her poor skin I’m uncertain. There were no real improvements when we started, so unless any improvements were subtle over a long period of time it seems unlikely that the absence of the softener will make much difference.

All that being said, by the time Jasmine had been dropped off at the childminders her skin had improvement a thousand fold. I wonder if this’ll continue throughout the day or whether it’s just a chance occurrence.

Taking the plunge

We managed to get Jasmine a speedy appointment at the docs who were there usual helpful selves. One of the docs was a little inexperienced with dermatological complaints and called in the help of another, who happens to be one of the practice owners. His bedside manner is a little patronising and he plainly isn’t too fond of us given our pharmaceutical differences of opinion. He doesn’t believe Jasmine’s suspicious rings are anything other than discoid eczema, but we managed to get the to take a swab anyway.

We came away armed with some ‘Daktarin’ cream using the active ingredient: 20mg of miconazole nitrate (2%w/w). This is an antifungal cream. They had another brand but that one contained a steroid as well. I think we’ll trial it on her inner thigh ‘rings’ to start to make sure there are no nasty surprises. I’m too suspicious of pharmaceuticals.

Who knows, we might actually get a night of uninterrupted sleep…

>edit<

We decided to go all out and use the cream on her face aswell. We also made sure to send her neenuus, bed linen and anything else she may have rubbed her face on for a good wash. Here's hoping!….

Ringworm?

Over our journey with Jasmine’s skin I have occasionally found myself doing a double take and focus a little closer on the blemishes on her skin. I’ve never had personal experience with ringworm but a little investigation doesn’t rule it out.

- Sometimes the patternations on her can be very similar to other examples of confirmed ringworm.
- Apparently ringworm and eczema are commonly found together.
- Her skin is generally good (bar the creases) yet these ‘rings’ persist.

I’ve not yet managed to get her into the Docs to confirm one way or the other but the evidence is fairly suggestive.

Bar her creases and a couple of similar rings on her inner thighs, the ‘eczema’ on her face is all that remains.

A better shot with a sleepy monkey:

A close-up of the ‘ring’ near her chin.

Curiouser and curiouser!

Bring on the colds…

It’s been a pretty crumby week so far. Jasmine’s skin has remained fairly stable but her night routine is shot through. She seems to be waking very regularly, enough to trigger calming visits. We were tempted to blame it on teething as she’s started putting everything in her mouth for a good chew.

She’s also just landed her first cold of the season so she’s a little worse for wear, bunged up and teary eyed. She does sound very cute though trying to speak with a bunged up nose.

Part of the weekends activities was to get the paints and sponges out. Jasmine adores painting and clearly thought that painting her own legs, arms and face was considerably more fun than sponging the paper! Steph did some great examples of sponging in the hope that Jasmine would follow suit, but she is just far too stubborn! She’s quite happy to demonstrate that she’ll do what she wants to do, in the way that she wants to do it. We’ve even gotten to the stage where she’ll throw herself on the floor in the classic tantrum pose! Evidently getting an early start on the ‘terrible twos’

BEFORE

AFTER

For the last week or so we’ve stopped her bifidofilus bacterium supplement as a test, but this doesn’t seemed to have made her nights any easier. She is however, going to bed very easily at the moment. After her bath, it’s the usual cream and dressing into PJ’s followed by a quick story (we’re trying to squeeze in brushing teeth here as well). After her story we turn her light out, give her a cuddle, put her in her cot and pull the duvet up, tucking it around her. She often says ‘night night’ to which we respond the same and we beat a hasty retreat. It’s amazing! After a year and a half of a bedtime routine taking up to an hour AFTER she’s completely ready for bed, this new technique is beautiful. It is also entirely her choice!

Almost good…

The week started off pretty good with Jasmine taking fairly well to her potato-less diet. Steph is doing pretty well with the cooking but it’s getting harder and harder to find recipes considering the amount of food she can’t eat! I think soon enough we’re going to have to introduce some food categories (i.e. gluten) to challenge her body. I believe it could be the only sure fire way of determining whether she truly has issues.

Off the potatoes Jasmine seems to be less windy and her skin showed signs of improvement. Her bowel movements are a little irregular but I’m guessing that’ll stabilise over time. She managed a couple of good nights throughout the week, even going through for an uninterrupted 11.5 hours! The last 2 nights however have returned to her old ways with 5 or so trips in to try and settle her. Sometimes it’s been wind related but generally nothing seems to be wrong. She draws immediate comfort from being picked up and cuddled and is soon asleep on the shoulder. She only seems to start up again once we try to leave after she’s been put down again. Last night she ended up in bed with us. Maybe it’s just a particularly anxious phase in her development, I don’t know. For all I know it could be last night’s full moon having an effect!!! >.<

Her skin has also taken a turn for the worst as well. She doesn't seem to be as itchy as she used to be, but there is definite flaring on her face, lower back and reoccurrence on her inner thighs. The creases on her knees, ankles and wrists always remained stubbornly red. We don't think this latest flare is anything out of the ordinary, instead we believe it is just continuance of the waves of recovery. We can only hope that the bad waves will get shorter where the good ones grow!