I’m really close to my mam, dad, brother and sister. We’re a really close family. And my mam and dad are both one of five, so we’ve got a big extended family. And so everyone is always looking for alternative therapies and having like clippings from, from the paper and from magazines and stuff. So it’s really nice. And I can just remember, I’ve got memories of, you know, sitting in the kitchen with my mam rubbing olive oil in my hair or my dad rubbing cider vinegar in my hair and it’s just, it’s just part, it’s just part of our lives, really. And they’re so helpful and they don’t make a big deal out of it. And, and whenever they’ve found a new therapy, you know, they try it out and stuff on me. And they are just so, so helpful and supportive and loving [laughs] they’re just brilliant. But I think they’re also perceptive as well with how I feel. They know, they can tell if I’m sad or if I’m stressed out about something and sometimes I won’t want to talk to them. So last year, when I was teaching, I lived with my parents and it did get quite stressful sometimes and particularly that episode with my boss and I was unhappy at times and quite stressed. And they know, they know me so well that they know. And sometimes I don’t want to talk about it. But they sat me down and said, Talk about it. You know, Tell us how you’re feeling. We know that, we know that you’re unhappy. And sometimes I would lose-, I would be short tempered and I’d be a bit mean to my mam and I hate being mean to my mam [laughs]. But, sometimes it makes you do that. And it’s horrible. And, y’know, I’m so frustrated with my skin and so irritated, and I’ll take it out on her or my dad, and you shouldn’t. I really, really shouldn’t and I know it’s easy to, but and they’re so understanding as well. But that’s why even if you don’t wanna talk about it, it helps, like it does. Cos, I didn’t want to talk about it at times and they sat me down and they said, Look, like, We know that you’re stressed or you’re upset and but tell us why. Talk to us about it, like how can we help? And I’m so lucky to have that, really. To have that support there, very, very lucky.

I realised it on my scalp, on my head and the doctor said it was some sort of fungal disease which is obviously- we know now it’s not. And they gave me some creams for that and, yeah, I did go to the doctors and they just said it was that and it turned away as something else.

How long did it take for somebody to correctly diagnose it as psoriasis?

Had it for about-, I had psoriasis before someone correctly diagnosed me for about six and a half months, but I had difficulty going to the doctors cos I was young and my mother is a full time-, she works full time so it’s difficult to get doctor hours that correlate with my mums working hours.

So it was very difficult to go to the doctors unless it really got serious and that’s-, by the time it gets too serious it gets pr-, it gets to the point where it’s not easily as treatable because of the severity of it and so it was about six or seven months.

Did the doctors give you anything during that time for what they thought was the fungal infection?

They gave me a fungal shampoo of which didn’t seem to work because obviously it was doing the wrong thing it wasn’t close to be treating me and then they gave me just like a little steroid cream for my face but that didn’t work either.

And that didn’t work either so obviously I went back at a later date.

I think my mum found it hard because she didn’t like seeing me so nervous about simple things like a Christmas party, because she didn’t like the fact that it had knocked me that much and she’s always told me like, you know, You need to be happy with who you are. It doesn’t matter what shape or size you are. But she could see that it really had knocked me. And then she didn’t like the discomfort I was in. And you know there was the odd time where it did get to me and she was like, I wish I could take it away for ya and make it better. Although it’s only a skin condition it just drove me potty and I think my parents didn’t like seeing how much it knocked me, because you know, I left school with very little confidence and I managed to build it back up when I was at uni and this just totally shattered it again. And I think they didn’t like seeing me like that 16 year old girl again that didn’t have any confidence and I think that was probably quite hard for my mum, because it took her a lot of support last time to help me get back and then when I-. I mean, my friends, I, my best friend was really understanding of it, but she’s, it’s easy for her to, you know, she wanted to wear little skimpy dresses and she had a little crop top and a little skirt on New Year and I look back at the pictures and although I liked what I wore, I look back at the pictures and knowing I wore it to cover my skin. And where I’m stood next to her and my sister and they both look really nice and youthful and I probably look back and I think I don’t really. I think, I think I found that hard, cos they were full of confidence and wanted to dance and stuff and I was like, I’m just gonna sit here. I’m fine. [Laughs]. Cos I just didn’t want people to see it.

At first when I first got psoriasis my mum used to look online and I used to think why is she looking online?’ cos I was quite depressed I used to say, Stop like just stop looking online, stop doing everything, it’s my problem. But then I didn’t realise that by her looking online and her getting more knowledge about it she got that knowledge so she could help me to deal with it. And then once I got to the point where I accepted her help I really-, I started to go online and search up the information on, on the NHS website or on like websites like the one you’ve got and I did take information from these websites and it did help me and there was little things that you could do to help and stuff like that.

Well at first cos my brother’s a bit older than me, he’s 19, and when I first got it he must have been about 15 or 16 and he was still a bit childish so obviously he used to-, before he knew it was something quite serious he used to make fun of me etcetera. And obviously I used to throw things back at him about him like a brother and sister or brother and brother do. And eventually once he realised it had got a bit serious he was supporting me so like today before I came for this interview he did text me and say like, Good luck with your interview and hope, hope it all goes well, and that’s the same with my sister, my sister’s very supportive, she’s always been very supportive of me. And my parents my parents just want what’s best for me and what makes me happy and stuff like going to the doctors and getting new treatments and they do really push for me to get the things that will help me so if it’s a new treatment or a new cream etcetera and they really do support me in anything that I do with my psoriasis or any research I do into my psoriasis or anything like that they do, they are very supportive.

One of my other sisters got diagnosed with psoriasis, so me and her used to go together; we used to be like, wake up early and be like, “We’ve got the hospital today.” But I felt better when she came, cos I like felt like I wasn’t on my own, it made me feel a bit like more secure. Like going on my own to the hospital, I got really scared. Like, loads of people would look at me when I was sat on the bus, and like I felt really self-conscious, but when my sister was there, me and her were just like, “Well, there’s two of us, you can’t really look at one of us weirdly,” like.

But hers went really quickly, she only had it for like a year so hers went really quickly, so then she stopped coming to the appointments with me.

It’s still easy to talk to her cos she kind of understands everything. So, we kind of like talk to each other and make sure everything’s OK. And she’s kind of like, I guess she’s like my best friend; like I can talk to her about anything, so as soon as I come from the hospital, she’ll be the first person that asks me. Like she’ll walk in the door, and like it’ll be the first thing she says. She won’t say Hi or anything, it goes like, “How was the hospital?” and then like that makes me feel better that I know I can talk to her about it.

Like I say, you know, and you get out the bath in the Oilatum and you dry off but you’d feel greasy. Then you’d have to put creams on, on top of that. You never felt you’d, I almost, it’s not that I didn’t feel clean but you didn’t feel refreshed, because you still felt covered in like something, like I say, all the creams and things you felt covered in them rather than. So, and if you, you know, if you had to put liberal amounts on you were, you kind of had to.

I think the main thing was like you had to wash the bath out every time you used it. Which, and, you know, you know, you rinse it out after you use it every time, but I had to like properly like wash it and rub it, because otherwise the next person would just fall like slip, cos there was that much like oil in the bottom and you see you had to be like really careful to make sure that you properly cleaned it out otherwise somebody was gonna slip and fall and hurt themselves.

It kind of sent me almost OCD about it. And I used to try, I mean which probably also wasn’t good for my skin at the time, but I was just desperate to be like proactive in kind of like getting rid of it. That I would put one thing on in the morning, so I’d shower, and then I would drape myself in all the moisturisers, then I would put something on. Three hours later I would go and shower, drape myself [laughs] in all the moisturisers, put something new on. Then, and I would just do this throughout the day, different things. Like five times a day I would shower and then cover myself in, in, in [uh] the moisturisers. I used to go to bed having draped myself in moisturisers in the hope that like it would give my, my skin so much moisture or something like that, that I would wake up and it would be gone. I would wake up being like really slippery and soft, have a good shower. And I would just do this ritual.