The treatment because I’m still under, I’m still 16 and like a student they don’t charge for the treatments. If I was over 18 and still wanting those steroids, they would like, I think, charge a lot. And they finish out quite quickly, it’ll take like two or three days to finish half a tube.

Ok.

And they’re quite expensive as well.

So you’d have to keep going back for more.

Especially the Cyclosporine cos it’s worth more than hundreds of pounds. That’s why the doctor said, Once you start, stop using the treatment again like can you please return any left over, because they’re like worth a lot of money.

I used to live in Scotland and I used to get it all free because, well, you get whatever, coal tar shampoo they have behind the, the chemist. And the chemist I went to, that’s what they had on offer. So I took my free prescriptions and then went great. They’d give me like £40 worth of T-Gel. And then, well, now I live in England I pay for my prescriptions. It’s like the same price to pay for coal tar shampoo as, with the prescription as it is to go buy it yourself. So I probably, I guess obviously I don’t use other shampoos, so I guess I don’t spend money on other shampoos. So it’s not so bad. Cos what I do, I, cos I don’t obviously like the smell of it in my hair, but I put like gel and wax on my hair afterwards, which is perfumed. So I know that the smell’s gonna go when I put that in.

In terms of costs, it’s c-, again cos I’ve lived, with different healthcare systems. I used to I think be a lot more proactive about getting help in Scotland, getting different treatments and trying things out, because of, it was free. So I was a lot more open to that. Being in England, I’m a lot more cautious about kind of the financial costs of like prescriptions because obviously it all adds up and stuff like that. So the great thing about living in Scotland was that if I needed something, if it didn’t work, it was like, well, it didn’t cost me any money or something like that. So I was constantly able to get all my treatment for free. I wouldn’t say it’s like a massive financial burden on my life, but it’s a cost that I have to pay that someone without psoriasis doesn’t have to pay.

I’ve paid money to fraudsters online for like dietary advice, exercise, health advice. So, which didn’t, well, it was just an absolute scam. And I knew it was a, as I was doing it I knew it was a scam. I was just so desperate, kind of like that. So I’ve tried to change my diet. That’s about it really. What else have I seen online? Ah things like buy this kind of smoothie making guide. And if you put like all of this and this and this and this, then just live off olive oil, you’ll be fine or something like that. Like really there’s stupid things that I’ve seen, that people kind of are desperate, like people really are. Like I was desperate. Do you know what I mean? I was so close to falling for a lot of them.

But I paid for this booklet that had like a guide. I think I paid like 20 dollars and it was just a PDF that was sent to me. And, and it was just basically like, Follow these steps and you won’t have psoriasis. This guy who apparently had psoriasis posted on the forum his like cure for psoriasis and it was a dietary cure. And, and it was basically like, If you eat just this for the next like 40-odd days or something like that, then your skin will go from here. And this guy had very severe plaque psoriasis to here. And he had an after picture. I don’t know if you’ve, if you’ve come across any of them. And I was like, Oh, my God. And I started emailing this guy. And I don’t know whether, like I feel he may have been genuine, like that happened to him. And I don’t, cos it didn’t come across at all like a scam. Like to me, he was emailing me back like decently. Like, without kind of being like, What’s your credit card details? or anything like that.

And although it sounds ridiculous, if you’re having a bath every day your water bill goes through the roof [laughs] because I was having to bath every day. Again it wasn’t, it was just for symptom relief like. And then they didn’t, they didn’t give me anything for a shower. I only had Oilatum for a long time. So I ended up having to bath just to, to kind of keep clean, cos I couldn’t use regular soaps, cos it irritated me. So I ended up going back to the GP again and asking for like something like a shower gel. So then I didn’t have to have a bath every day, but I could only really maybe skip one bath because the bath, you know, you soak in it and it did do, it was better.

Applying ointment’s not fun when it’s really cold in the winter. And I used to live in student, like with students and it used to be dreadful like when people wouldn’t put the heating on. And I had to sometimes sit naked and apply an ointment to my body. And I used to hate it, having to do that, because I’d be freezing cold in this flat. And that wasn’t very enjoyable. And I’d sometimes put it off because of that. And then you could be quite uncomfortable as well with an ointment on. Like when you, and then cos it was so cold I’d have to put like pyjamas on or something like that, get into bed, and it wouldn’t be the most comfortable sleep. And once I was asleep it was fine. But it was getting to sleep, you could feel it all over you.

And, but, so that wasn’t always great, that kind of routine when I kind of like couldn’t afford heating. Or, or you had to, the politics of kind of like I wanted the heating on and part. And also like, I used to, the people that I used to live with like having a warm flat was important to me because of my skin. But I, and I don’t think I, well, I d-, well, again I didn’t wanna be like we’ve got all put the heating on like today unless they, like I just wanted it on occasionally. Because I’d be in a really cold flat and I know that the cold’s not good for my skin and it makes it break out. And then it also means that I don’t wanna treat my skin so easily because it’s a really uncomfortable experience. So that wasn’t so great. But then now I live with my parents where it’s like warm all the time, where if I want to I can like walk around in like just my tracksuit bottoms and like no T-shirt on. And if I thought, I’d better treat my skin or something like that, I can go up and put it on and just go and sit down and no, no one will batter an eyelid or anything like that. So it means I’m probably more active in terms of looking after my skin than I was when I lived in this like freezing cold flat where it was just like, one, it was bad for my skin in the first place and, two, it was then very uncomfortable to treat my bad skin.