*Vasculitis is a particular type of Stroke that affects blood capillaries. The location of the disease is various, dependent on both one’s genetic make-up and life habit.
By Johanes Hartono (johanes.hartono@outlook.com)
It started around October 2017, my first-time experience into winter in Qatar, when the surrounding environment shifted from hot humid summer to cool but dry air weather. I didn’t initially recognize that such weather can be lethal to a skin that is not healthy and not properly maintained such as mine. It started with itchiness on my lower and rear part of my legs, the more I scratched the itchier it became, that in a couple of weeks’ time it leads to wound my skin and turned to lesions.
I didn’t do any treatment in the beginning as I thought that when I took a bath the skin rashes slightly disappeared by itself, although it would resurface after my skin got dry again. With scratching it got even worse and was never back to normal until the time in December when it was time for me to travel back to Indonesia for a 3 week-year end vacation.
During my stay in Indonesia, I was kind of unaware of the difference in the climate of Indonesia compared to Qatar particularly in terms of humidity, I only realized it later when I was back in Qatar, the skin problem resurfaced again. During my 3 weeks’ vacation, I was pretty much enjoying it without being bothered with any skin problem to be it dry or rash, as the skin rashes died down completely in the whole duration of my stay in Indonesia.
Back in Qatar after returning from vacation, it was early January, so the weather was still cold and dry, the first week from my arrival I again got my skin dry and the rashes returned. I began to notice red blotchy patches on the lower part of my legs, rear of my thighs, and tummy. In those areas, I felt the pain, itchy, burning, and tingling sensation. The rash quickly developed fluid-filled blisters. In several weeks, the blisters spread all over my body except my face and buttock. I couldn’t remember that my body was getting weaker in the beginning, until one day when the virus died and left my body, that was after about 2 months. That is because I kind of ignored the pain and my body weakness, and I continued to do my activity and worked normally despite my skin problem. Perhaps because I didn’t feel any problem eating, also all my internal organs and metabolism worked normally. But when the virus left my body, at that time I felt like there was a switch that turned off. I realized that I had been very weak in the last 2 months since the virus infection.
In about 1.5 to 2 months that the virus took the residence in my body, the blisters turned yellow and dried out, but it would appear somewhere else where the area of the skin was not yet affected. The cycle continued, and additionally, my legs getting swollen like an elephant leg, although it could very well be due to the olive oil that I applied on my legs at that time as I thought that it could help to ease my skin dryness, but which turned out to make my legs worse, that is it turned into really big swollen filled with liquid. In about 1-week time after that, now my face also getting swollen, especially my cheeks, eyes surrounding, and ears, they were full of liquid. The liquid would leak during my sleep through the lower part of my ears, below my eyes and on the side of my eyebrows.
I amped up my diet to compensate for the loss of my body liquid by drinking water more, eating more fruits, including in juice form, and more vegetables. In addition to eating plant-based dishes cooked in pure coconut oil, I also drink turmeric in hot water. It did help my internal body metabolism, despite the outer appearance and painful shingles all over my body. In order to ease the pain, due to the skin cracks, painful blisters, my wife prepared a natural home-made remedy of coconut oil and various spices. The concoction effectively prevented the infection of the open wound, stopped the wound from bleeding, and compensated the itchiness and burning sensation, and helped to dry out the wounds and so they could completely crust over.
Once the virus died and left my body, I tried to completely cover my legs with a bandage, after applying another infused coconut oil, the bandage would help to prevent me from scratching the skin. After about 1 week, I opened the bandage and it turned out that most of the wound now dried and the dead skin peeled and fell off, which was a good sign. However, the problem was once I exposed the skin in the open air again, the itchiness returned and so before too long the blisters would resurface, and sometimes since I couldn’t resist from scratching they got even worse. That I had to repeat the bandaging process for another week, and on and on. Until one day, my wife prepared another home remedy made out of a mixture of real honey substance and coconut oil as the base. I applied it throughout my body. It’s quite amazing, in the beginning, it’s sticking like glue when it’s still wet but after a couple of hours, it would get dry, giving a feeling that you have artificial outer layer on your skin that not only it eases the pain of burning sensation but also removes the feeling of itchiness.
The aftermath of the virus attack was that it caused my skin to be very dry and cracked, despite the number of blisters was reducing. My skin becomes very flaky with dead skin all over. Every time the flakes fell off, the underlayer of my cracked skin would continue to regenerate the flakes all over again, and in some areas, even the wound would reopen. During this period, I would have to survive by another home remedy recipe made by my wife, which is a mixture of various flowers infused in coconut oil. It did help to prevent itchiness and ease the burning sensation of the wound.
With all these remedial concoctions I am happy that I could get to about 80% to my supposedly normal skin. I knew that it would have been sooner to be back to 100% normal if I could spend some time to rest in my country, Indonesia, where lush vegetation and fresh air are abundant, albeit in dire need for protection.
At the beginning of June 2018, as soon as I landed in Jakarta and exposed to the cool but very humid weather, I could immediately feel that the natural oil coming out from my sweaty skin helped to ease the dryness of my cracked skin. I can still see that my skin still looks dark after this severe skin disease, which I think the dark parts are the dead skin buried beneath my skin, but I think it will slowly be replaced as the new skin layer regenerates. I can already see how it happens as I keep applying the last coconut-based remedy that my wife made on my skin.
I hope that this writing would help and benefit those who would experience similar skin disease and would be encouraged that following the natural remedial procedure is proven to be effective and even more if it is supported by a conducive and healthy environment, a full recovery is possible.