Feeling so sad about DD's eczema

[Schulte]

It started when she was 4mo with a massive skin infection on top. Then we got it under control and it was manageable all of last year, confined to her legs, and nearly gone during the winter months, where all we needed to use was a bit of Diprobase twice a day. She's now 2yo and with the start of the hayfever season, has had a massive flare-up which we can't get on top of. She's covered in angry red patches and pimples all over, her fingers and wrists are scratched raw and sometimes she can't sleep. I am so sad because I thought it was getting better and now it's the worst it's ever been. She also coughs a lot, which makes me worry about her developing asthma too. There is a whole selection of creams on her changing table at the moment which we are trying out in desperation but nothing seems to make an obvious difference.

Please someone cheer me up and tell me that children do grow out of eczema? And that they don't all end up with asthma to boot?

My own DD- 8yrs has grown out of her Asthma, & after initially tearing my hair out over her diagnosed excema as a baby - turned out to be caused by chemical colours in food,(Azo Dyes) soap etc & Benzoate preservatives, also lactose intolerance, MSG & artificial sweeteners affect both her skin & stomach - cutting all of these out of her diet - much easier than it used to be - means her skin is lovely - this started to affect her via my BM as I was eating stuff she was intolerant too

so there is hope for your own DD :)

• have you looked at her diet & possible triggers there??

also - oats, lavender oil & epsom salts in her bath might help - this reduces stress for her too, which is self feeding for both Exzema & Asthma & I've hear Aveeno cream is good (oat based) but we found a herbal cream worked best for DD - Zambesia Botanica - AKA Sausage Tree Cream

good luck

My son had awful eczema as a baby. It cracked and bled all the time and it was very sad. At the end of my tether I took him to a Chinese herbalist and was given cream, powders and a shower gel. It was 70% better within 48 hours, I swear. And within a week it was gone. And it never came back.

Might all sound a bit woo, and could have been coincidental, of course, but either way he is now 11 and hasn't had a patch of it since he was 1.

He still has asthma though :(

DS has had eczema since he was a baby - now 8yo - it is aggrevated by certain foods and like OP we used Diprobase which worked well. Now using oat based Aveeno and it is working really well.

He also has an inhaler which he takes now and then when he gets wheezy, it depends what is in the air. He does take anti-histhamine every day as he gets really bad hayfever!

Apart from this he is really happy and healthy - joking aside it has not stopped him doing anything including a huge amount of sport and it has definately become more seasonal as he has got older. I am pretty sure that he will grow out of it all except perhaps the hayfever - just like his dad then!!!!

Schulte it sounds like you are trying so hard to help your child, and it is exhausting! both my kids have had eczema, the older one grew out of it at age 3 with help from homeopathy, but the younger one had it much worse, and still has it at age 5. I am determined that she will grow out of it though, and she has treatment from a homeopath too. How much help are you getting to manage it from GP? have you been referred to dermatology yet? my daughter's eczema is not cured, but it is so much better since she is under the dermatology nurses, who give me really detailed advice about how to use creams,bandages, how to manage, etc.

I was also very concerned about asthma, and sought advice from GP, and then homeopath. I happen to believe that my homeopath prevented my child from becoming asthmatic at the crucial early stages. It is very upsetting to see your child suffering when you feel powerless, but in the majority of cases, children do grow out of eczema. I really hope you find something which helps her, Schulte.. best of luck.

Quote from national eczema society:
"Most children grow out of atopic eczema as they get older, but it is not possible to say at exactly what age the problem will go away. In approx 65 % of children the eczema has gone by the time they are seven years of age and in approx 74% of children the eczema will have disappeared by 16 years of age. It isn?t possible to tell whether your child will or will not out grow their eczema, although generally speaking those who have the more severe eczema are less likely to grow out of it. However, even children who ?out grow? eczema can continue to have ?sensitive? skin as adults."

Thanks so much everyone. I have only been to the GP once since her flare-up started, and got the usual 'try stronger steroids and greasier emollients' type advice. I think I will go back and ask for a referral though as it's so bad this time. How easy is it to get referred?

With regards to the asthma - her cough is wet rather than a hacking, dry one - is this a symptom or not? She was quite snotty a few weeks ago so I am very much hoping that it's the tail end of a cold... What do I need to watch out for?

DS suffered terribly with eczema when he was little and I remember feeling so helpless not being able to take the itch away and trying to stop him scratching. He went on an extensive exclusion diet and grew more or less out of it by the age of 5. He still has sensitive skin and prone to hayfever but it is controlled with cream, anti-histhamine and an inhaler.

Oh and the food thing... I know she is allergic to egg so we avoid everything with egg in it. She's always had a lot of dairy but then her skin was very good all winter even with the dairy in her diet... so I think there can't be a link there?

Do go back to the GP - the 'different emollients and steroids' advice did help us in the end - and you need to both try lots of different emollients (not necessarily greasier) and put the emollient on loads and loads - we did it every nappy change at least. I really feel for you it is horrible. We got on top with it in the end with Diprobase cream slathered on all the time, hydrocortisone for flare-ups, Aveeno oil in the bath, Surcare washing powder and NO fabric conditioners or other washing additives. We were also prescribed Piriton for bad flare-ups like you describe which helped settle that down if it got bad, and eventually we did get on top of it.

Ds' eczema gradually eased off - he's now nearly 5 and only gets the odd patch. He is developing a wheeze / persistent cough whenever he gets a cold, every few months or so, and has an inhaler for that, but hasn't been 'officially' diagnosed with asthma (yet) and it is a very minor problem at the moment.

Have you tried using anti-histhamine like piriton syrup? Ask you doctor to prescribe it.

Regarding the dairy, with DS it was a combination of food allergies and pollen allergies and others like certain chemicals, not just 1 thing to pinpoint to.

DH just won't believe me that there is a link to asthma - have read that 50-70% of eczema children go on to develop asthma - is that right? DD has had croup 3 times and had a wheeze with the last episode too. So I am holding my breath...

We're in the same boat as you. Last year at this time DS's skin was at an all time low point. Then the hayfever season finished and his skin improved dramatically, he finally started sleeping through the night at that point.

Now he's suddenly having a flare up again since the tree pollen season started. However, it's still not as bad as it was last year.

I'm hopeful that come the end of June he will improve again like it did last year and hopefully your DD's will too.

I've been giving him more baths to try to wash away the pollen and no line drying of clothes. All the pollen muck that you see on your car must be blowing on to anything on the washing line as well!

I think you are right to push for a referal. Poor little mite sounds like she has it really rough at the moment.

We were told by the specialist that there is a link between eczema and asthma. DH had severe asthma when he was little and he (probably) passed that on to DS in the form of eczema. DS is wheezy at times and does cough badly when he has a cold or it's the hayfever season but he is NOT suffering from asthma. So eczema doesn't automatically mean asthma.

Second ElBandito regarding the no line drying and try washing everything at at least 60.

And don't be sparse with the cream, I remember using a pot of epiderm per week.

There is something called the Allergic March (also known as the Atopic March) though what proportion of children progress to asthma doesn't seem to be definitively established. I have read in various places that severity of early atopic dermatitis/eczema is a risk factor for later asthma, so I also would push for a referral, ideally to a paediatrician knowledgeable in allergy and asthma. Has your DD already seen a specialist to have the egg allergy diagnosed? These conditions are often not taken seriously enough early enough IME. And they can have a considerable impact on the child's quality of life - and that of the whole family.

Our GP also said there was a link between Exzema & Asthma too -

though DDs asthma started after pneumonia & as theres no exzema or Asthma in the family I disputed the exzema diagnosis - it turned out to be urticaria, which as the others have already said IS an allergic reaction in DDs case to additives, though her Asthma did get worse with tree pollen too - she was taken off her inhalers end of last year & has been fine :)

I agree might be worth looking into antihistamine - & if it helps,

but you are not happy with long term use, you might want to look into Histamine Rich Foods - basically lots of foods contain histamine, which builds up a in the system when eaten, so when other allergens come into the mix - you get a "Histamine Reaction" hence why you take antihistamine for allergy - cutting down on these foods at times of high pollen or other extra allergens can stop flare ups of any allergic response - be it urticaria, asthma or hayfever - it doesn't necessarily mean cutting out ALL of these foods - you will probably find something jumps out at you that DD has been eating more of -

in my case it was tomatoes - I don't eat them in pollen months - I don't get hayfever - my friends DS was bananas - it helped his allergic asthma a lot when he cut these out during pollen season.

My DS (8)has always had terrible eczema, and I thought we just had to live with it (GP fairly unsympathetic about it, said things like "he won't die of it" I KNOW that, but it is still misery).

I asked the pharmacist about giving him piritin long term. She said if it is that bad, talk to the GP again. She then recommended a GP who understands eczema. This GP listened, looked and made a plan for me (with me) to get on top of DS eczema.

1.) new cream: mometasone, apply once a day for a week max. if there is an outbreak. She said she would trust me not to overdo it. As soon as an outbreak starts, I am on top of it with this cream, and it GOES
2.) bath not too often.
3.) preventive creaming up (ordinary emollient) EVERY single day.
4.) wash clothes twice, once with soap, then another rinse cycle with just water

With these measures we finally got on top of it. The GP told me it really is not necessary to live with bad eczema.

You need a good, sympathetic GP. Or else I would have gone to a dermatologist privately, whatever the cost. We had had enough.

Our GP was fantastic, his daughter had had eczema and he totally got it. He told us that for mild to moderate childhood eczema, he thought a GP with experience of dealing with it in lots of patients was probably better than a dermatologist, as they see more extreme cases / other problems; but you do need to find a GP who will work with you till you find a regime that works. And yes had forgotten about baths twice a week not every day, we still do this now.

Oh and eczema, asthma, hayfever, food allergies all linked, definitely - to do with levels of immunoglobulins in the blood or something - doesn't mean you will have them all but if you have one, another is more likely. The food allergies can go, though; ds was allergic to eggs, tomatoes and ... something else which I can't recall ... the allergy nurse told us he would grow out of them by age 3 and sure enough he did. But that isn't the case for all children, and they did skin prick tests to confirm he was OK to try eating them again before we tried tiny amounts first, so it is good to have support from the hospital for that sort of thing.

Thanks all for your support. DD's egg allergy was confirmed with a skin prick test which we had done privately, but the consultant was useless and suggested that because the hive wasn't very big, we should just try giving her cake at home . I know how big a skin rash she gets when she touches egg so needless to say I didn't do a food challenge at home. I will wait until her skin doesn't react to contact with egg before it goes anywhere near her mouth! She won't eat tomatoes although I am pretty sure there is no allergy there.

I think I will go back to the GP and ask for a referral. We're already bathing her only once a week, and always have the washing machine on extra rinse cycle, I have a dust allergy myself so no carpets, she's taking antihistamines daily at the moment etc etc... it must be a matter of finding the right creams surely?

Your dd sounds very similar to my dd1. She has an egg allergy and has always had very bad eczema. The eczema has improved as she has grown up (she is 4 now). When she was a baby she was covered, whereas now it tends to be around her legs and creases (elbows, knees)

It is very similar to your dd in that it is very much worse in summer. It virtually disappears during the winter.

However I have now come to realise that it is a combination of eczema and prickly heat rather than just eczema (perhaps your dds pimples are prickly heat - as the typical prickly heat rash is pimply?). If you 'Google Images' 'prickly heat there are some examples. For some reason I was happier to discover that much of the pimply rash on her torso was prickly heat rather than eczema, even though it's horribly itchy.

Dd1 has just been tested for a pollen allergy which came back negative but positive for a dust and mould allergy. The dust mite skin prick weal was shockingly large.

The nurse commented that an explosion of eczema/rhinitis in spring/summer could well be related to a dust mite allergy since that is when the mites start becoming active. Lovely! I am slightly cross that these tests weren't run earlier as I feel I could have done so much more to keep her mite free.

In relation to asthma, I agree it is a constant worry, and our allergy specialist confirmed that although it was more likely it wasn't inevitable. However I think sadly that the positive dust mite test does make it more likely.

I have made an appoitment with my GP to discuss asthma, the signs and what to look out for so that I can get the appropriate meds as and when it starts.

Lots of sympathy, eczema is really hideous - and so underestimated!

Do go back to the GP to try to have this managed more effectively - it is possible. It's a miserable condition and with the warmer summer weather (possibly!) approaching can get very uncomfortable - and there's also the risk of it getting infected with something like impetigo. And as systemsaddict says, a good idea to have hospital advice and support if you are thinking of food challenges down the line.
There was an article on eczema which discussed various creams in the Independent recently.

On the egg allergy side, dd1 had a ' baked egg challenge' in hospital which she passed. So she can now eat cake, biscuits etc. Actually there are very few things she can't eat (some ice creams, mayonnaise). It has improved her quality of life massively so that could be something that a specialist could organise along with various tests to find her 'trigger'

I might think about a herbalist for dd2 (milk, egg allergies, chronic (but less dramatic but more itchy) eczema

I feel for you Shulte, ds had severe eczema from the age of 6 weeks and also has food allergy problems. He wore special suits to stop him scratching 24/7 and we were treated by the dermatologists at the hospital all without much success. Much to my amazement he started to grow out of it just before he turned 4, he's now been pretty much eczema free (apart from elbows for some reason) for a year. There was no magic cure or treatment, I think he just started to become a lot less reactive. He still has allergies and scratches at night but I think this is just habit now.

So don't give up hope, it can happen - he was at his worst as he turned 3 and I just despaired but all is now much better. And as everyone has said there is a definite link with asthma, he was constantly monitored for it at the hospital and at one stage I was told he would 'almost certainly' develop it by the consultant. Happily he hasn't and I was told by an asthma nurse that if they're going to develop it they usually do before they hit five so it looks like we may have avoided it hopefully.

Good luck in the meantime and push for a referral to your dermatology department - GP's aren't always the best at dealing with eczema as you know.

If it helps - I had a bad egg allergy as a child - though it affected my stomach the most - I'd grown out of it completely by the time I was about 7 :)

It does help (me at least). Thanks rockinhippy