Horrible pic attached, eczema?

[FancyMauveDreamer]

My 11-year-old daughter has had occasional mild eczema since she was a baby but never needed steroids etc.

A couple of months ago she suddenly developed severe itchy rashes on her arms and legs. Blood on clothes and bedsheets cos of the itching. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The doctors say it’s eczema. So far we’ve tried:

• 2 rounds of steroids,
• 2 rounds of antibiotics,
• prescription creams and emollients,
• replaced soap with emollient,
• Calm Balm from Wild Mint,
• eczema bedtime clothing,
• new pillow, duvet and 100% cotton bedding,
• cotton or viscose clothes only.

I don’t know what else to do. Surely if it was eczema it would’ve improved by now!

She’s starting secondary school next week and feeling self-conscious about her skin.

I agree you should see a dermatologist. For a private paediatric derm, we have seen Dr Rachael Morris-Jones in London and she was very helpful (diagnosed keratosis pilaris as the underlying issue for DD after a string of wrong diagnoses by GPs).
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This looks a lot like my DS's eczema - it was diagnosed as discoid eczema. Very hard to treat. He developed it at 3 and he's now 13 and still has it. We were under a dermatologist consultant's care for 3 years and tried removing all kinds of things from his diet, all to no avail, but when the dermatologist said the only thing left to try was immune suppressants, I declined (DS was 6).

Since then, we have just treated it with steroids and constant moisturiser (we had to try loads before we found one that he could tolerate). We have to bring our own sheets when we travel because he always bleeds. Eczema is still there, but more manageable. No longer on his face, which is good - he used to get it around his eyes, too. Have a very strong steroid for when it's really bad but we just 'manage' it day to day. DS is very good about it but it does sometimes get him down. I am still holding out hope that he'll grow out of it! I hope you are more succesful than we were at finding something that works. It sucks. ❤

In the short term, try Balneum Plus - a moisturiser which includes an anti-itching ingredient, and Bioderma's Atoderm range which I prefer to Aveeno.

@FancyMauveDreamer We actually got an appointment the day I called - they had had a cancellation. It took a few hours driving but I got there.

We only needed the one appointment (lots of medication prescribed) and she gave follow up advice for the NHS dermatologist who knew who she was and respected her advice. We were advised to email them with photos and they responded with a quicker appointment.