Danielle's story

Hi, I’m Danielle, I’m an artist living with chronic hand eczema and on this World Chronic Hand Eczema Day, I wanted to tell you my story.

How Eczema Impacted My Childhood

I’ve had eczema since I was very little, I'd probably say it started showing up when I was around two or three and I've mostly been on treatment my whole life. Eczema started off on my hands, as well as the usual joints and creases in your body, and I had it under my nose as well.

At primary school, my eczema got really bad and my skin started flaring from my hands through to my face, I was struggling with food allergies too and I was also getting topical steroid withdrawal. My face was bright red, and I could feel it as it was burning. I remember always going back and forth to the Doctors too.

I was also experiencing the mental health effects of all this as well, during that time. My eczema made me quite a reserved child. Because my hands were so bad at the time, I remember shying away from loads of things. I didn't really want to put myself in front of people, introduce myself and shake hands. I've always had vivid memories of being in primary school where we had to line up and take your partner's hands before you went into the class and that just filled me with absolute dread. Some people wouldn't take my hands just because they thought they were going to catch a disease. We were all very young, so I didn't have the words to explain. I would just say, ‘I've got dry skin, I've got eczema.’

When I was struggling with eczema at school, I also became quickly obsessed with art. But at times eczema made this very challenging for me. My hands and wrists would get so severely cracked that if I was to grasp a pencil or a crayon, and feel my wrists rubbing around on the paper, it would get so sore.  But I don’t ever remember feeling that I couldn’t do it. Art was the one thing that I just absolutely loved that I never considered not doing it.

Treatment

When I was 16, I moved to a new doctor to help treat my chronic eczema - I still see them every six months to this day. In that time, my skin has been treated with topical steroids and then just tapering down. I try not to use the steroids unless I really need to. After a while it got so much better from when I was a child, but I think that's also because of the diet changes that I've had to make as well; I've got quite a few allergies now.  If I can just keep my hands moist and keep the barrier there, it tends to be okay. But it's still so tricky because I'm touching everything and if I touch something in my hands, then scratch my face, It becomes infected after itching more and more. At the moment, I just use Vaseline on my face. I don't touch anything else and it seems to just lock it in.

How Eczema Impacted My Career

I would end up doing printed textile design at art school. I loved it but there were so many things I had to watch out for, we were using a lot of pastes, attending dye workshops and getting in and around paint and chemicals. I would try using gloves but even then, there’d be all sorts of splashes which could fall onto my skin. I just had to go slower and be more mindful than everyone else. But I would never let all these potential risks to my skin stop me from trying new artistic methods. I would just have to think ‘what can I do to make this less severe on my skin?’

I found that with my hand eczema it was less irritated by the materials that I was using, and more how often I had to wash my hands - which would then dry them out really quickly. I always had to have my cream with me and rub it on every time I’d wash my hands. But I’ve never let my eczema stop me. I just have to think extra, what are the extra things that I need to do? A lot of it is just keeping the cream there. I've now got these better gloves that I wear quite a lot, so it tends to do the trick, but everything can change so much, so fast. I just have to be one step ahead.

After beginning my career in England, working in textiles, I then moved back to Scotland and ended up in a completely different, office-based role, working in e-commerce and digital marketing.  I noticed a difference in my skin from this change. In the morning, the office would be quite warm, but then you would get full blown gusts of air condition coming on in the afternoon. I could just feel it sticking on me in the air, taking all the goodness out of my skin. It's things like that which can trigger my eczema. I would always have to make sure I was applying my cream throughout the day.

How Eczema Impacted My Pregnancy

Around a similar time, I became pregnant and my skin badly flared up. I really struggled with my mental health as I became so stressed and paranoid that my kids were going to have really bad eczema too. It gave me so much anxiety. I think that was one of the things that helped flare up my eczema too. But there wasn't any support from the doctors for this, I wasn't offered anything.  

For myself and my kids, I was very conscious of what products I was buying: washing powder, wet wipes, non-scented things like nappies, all that kind of stuff. Everything I bought was stripped back. I would always buy cotton clothes, airy things, and try to keep it as natural as possible. But I was always worried that they would one day just get eczema. So, I was trying to prepare for that. My partner has been super understanding with all of it, but obviously he doesn't know eczema like I do, he's never experienced this. Since going through this, I remain cautious, but my anxiety and eczema have settled down and is in a better place.

You Can Do It!

While I never stopped making art, I made the decision a few years ago to return to it full-time, starting my own business. I’ve been doing commissioned work, including working on my own Scotties dog! I also run after school arts workshops for kids. There are children in the class as well that have eczema. I'm always wary to see if I can help. If I see them struggling, I can quietly say, if you want to put your cream on, you can go to the toilet. So, it's really nice to share that as we can be there to support each other. And, of course, it still always gets messy! You think you can’t do these things with your hands, but you can do it. There's just a lot of preparation around it before and after as well.