Healing Pictures and Update

Lots of good news to share!!!!

First I have been very busy this past week!  All my extra time is spent on the phone!  Hubby and I purchased 68 acres on Kentucky a few years ago so we can have our own homestead.  We had planned to build a home there this past year but with me going through TSW and not being able to work, those plans were put on hold.  Well this year my parents decided to come live with us in KY.  My dad planned to retire this year and they would move in with us at some point. Well dad up and retired for the end of January.  So we now plan to get moving on our plans a little sooner than expected (we were going to wait until we had built up our savings again, but now that's not necessary).  So the past week has been filled with tons of phone calls....thankfully hubby and I had already talked to lots of people, had our land perk tested, picked out our builder, and so forth.  But actually making the big move to get started is very time consuming!  So if I seem to disappear for awhile here and there, more than likely it has to do with our building process and not my skin!  :)

Second, my skin is doing very well!!!  I still have my areas that I scratch over and over and have a hard time healing. But overall no more actual flaring this week. Lots of healing since my December flare. Pictures below were taken today and below the pictures I will post the link to the post I did on the 19th of December that showed the damage I did with that flare from all the horrendous scratching.  I have not had any more micro-flares this week....no oozing, no scratch fests!  I just have areas that get itchy a few times a day. You will see my neck and the one area that I scratched this morning just  before taking the pics....it doesn't hurt, just irritated.  I have been tanning for the last 2 weeks consistently and have seen huge changes!  I continue with the no moisturizer AT ALL approach and bathing is 1 dead sea salt bath per week with spot cleaning the other days. I tried Dan's approach with the tea tree oil and not sure it was helping, so I stopped even that.  I found some really good bandages to put on my hands at work to protect them from infection and work ordered me special gloves that don't irritate my skin like the regular gloves they have.  I am really blessed to be working at such a great place with truly caring people!

And third, I am finally going to get the honeymoon I never had!  Hubby doesn't read my blog, so I will let you in on a secret....my plans to go to Florida for January to help heal my skin have now turned into a plan to surprise my hubby with a vacation for him and I in February.  My parents will be taking the kids for the week and work is going to give hubby a fake schedule...showing him working during the week I will be away, but actually he will have off along with me and I can surprise him the day we leave!

Overall I have to say things are going VERY well!  Life feels like it is going in all the right directions (finally after being stagnant at a standstill for almost a full year!).

Here are my pics from this morning:

These are almost identical shots to the 12/19 pics I took here: http://stoppingtopicalsteroids.blogspot.com/2013/12/flare-subsided-today-but-damage-already.html

I personally see and FEEL a huge difference!  I just have to stop scratching  my few problem areas and I think my skin will be nearly all healed until the next flare!  I'm still betting on a 3-6 more month completely healed time frame which would put me healed by June 2014...this is just a personal prediction based on the level of healing I have already experienced since being treated for the MTHFR gene mutation.   But given how much I have healed in 2 weeks since my last flare, I think I stand a good chance of winning my own bet!  :) Happy Healing to all!!