I didn’t know what it was, it was I didn’t really understand what psoriasis was it was just something that I had that other people didn’t. I didn’t mind it to be honest I just, it felt kind of cool when you, when I went into primary school cos I stood out and eventually it got worse just cos I used to get bullied for it but yeh I just, the bullying didn’t bother me to be honest and the school sorted it out.

What do you mean about the initial was sort of a bit cool to stand out, do you remember how you felt about that at the time?

Yeh it was just cos I was different, I mean there were so many young children around here everyone, everybody was the same and cos a lot of like my friends had, we’d all been born at the same time.

Yeh.

And they were all, whenever they got together they were all talking about their children but mum always came back and said how many times I came up in conversation just because of my feet and how I was different, how I stood out but I quite liked being seen as special and a bit different to be honest.

So it’s good different.

Yeh.

I remember being told that it was psoriasis, and then I sat there and I didn’t know what to do, because I was seven, and I didn’t even like want to go to the hospital; I just wanted to go to school. And then I sat there and I remember my mum trying to explain to me, like-, I knew that it was something to do with my skin, but I didn’t know what it was, and like I used to ask my mum weird questions like, “Am I going to die?” and everything, because at seven, I didn’t know like the side-effects or anything.

And I remember sitting there once the nurse had told my mum, and I just sat there, and like loads of questions went through my head. Like, I didn’t know what to think, because a seven year old doesn’t expect to sit in the hospital and be told that she’s got a skin condition, which she could have for the rest of her life. And I just kind of sat there like, this is going to entail on my whole life; I could have it for the rest of it, and like people are going to think it’s ugly and horrible, and like I’m going to lose so many people because of it. Like I knew what was going to happen, and then it did eventually.

I think I was diagnosed at a really sort of key time, because I was just about to go to secondary school. And I was very aware of my appearance and how I looked and things. And, I did find it very difficult. I found it more difficult then than I would now if I was just diagnosed now, I think. And I think, because, as a child or as a teenager, especially, y’know, I was going through school and I was working really hard on my studies, but then, y’know, I was interested in boys and I had lovely friends as well, but all of these things coming together and I thought well, and it was, it’s so difficult. You don’t really, you don’t know who you are or what you want yet, I didn’t anyway. I had no idea. And but now, at, at 24, I’m secure in a relationship and happy, you know, career wise and I think when you are happy like that and secure, you tend, well, in my, in my experience, I now feel better about my condition and feel that I can handle my condition better and keep it under control better.

I was with my girlfriend and she looked at that and was like Don’t read too much into the internet because well you know there’s so much out there and things like that and I knew she was right and kind of knew the same myself but it’s much more difficult to see that when you’re the one who’s googling something that you think you have. So it was nice in that way to have someone else sort of telling you to be rational and reasonable because it’s harder when it’s about you, if that makes sense.

Was there anything else when you were googling that you thought it might have been?

Nothing from memory, no, no. I think the only other thing I kind of assumed it was either just dry skin or maybe, or maybe eczema and then obviously there’s always the irrational part of you that thinks it was some horrible tropical disease that you’ve picked up but when you kind of rationalise it you know that it’s probably not and of course it wasn’t, so.

Did you do any research online about psoriasis during that time?

I didn’t really do that much. If you go online and start trying to look up skin conditions, you quite quickly get into a- a bit of a sea of something-it is and something-else-itis and this-iasis and that and the other, and all of them sound the same. Red, itchy rash; some of them are here, some of them are there. But they all effectively sound the same. So I quickly realised that I wasn’t going to get anywhere from trying to diagnose myself, I would trust the doctors I was seeing to hopefully do the best- like do the right thing. And even though they couldn’t say it’s definitely this or it’s definitely that, and maybe one week they’d say this, and then the next week it looks a bit more like this, I don’t think that yeah. I don’t- I don’t think in my case it was useful to try-, to spend all day trying to work out what it was and Wikipedia this and that and the other symptom, because it wouldn’t really shed any light on it, it would just make it a bit more confused. But I think it did make a difference when it was sort of confirmed, as it much as it can be, as a psoriasis, that I could sort of- it had a certain set of symptoms that were- were psoriasis as opposed to being a sort of general dermatitis or an eczema or this, that and the other.

Do you remember what you thought when you first started to get some small patches on your trunk of psoriasis?

Yeah, so my first thought was, was quite panicked to be honest. I think that most people when that kind of thing springs up you just think why am I getting this? What is this? Is it like, you know, some sort of tropical disease that I’ve caught over the summer? Like is it cancer?’ you know, y- you just don’t know at all. But yeah, I think just looking up on the internet it was quite, it’s quite easy to tell, especially with like the guttate psoriasis, it’s quite easy to tell exactly what it is.

So that was that. What did find when you searched in the terms that you were looking for, that psoriasis was automatically the first thing that came up?

Yeah, pretty much, yeah. So it’s, it’s just so recognisable and there are pictures up on the internet now that straight away, you know, I could tell. Obviously, you know, I wasn’t a 100 percent sure until I’d been to the doctors. But yeah, I mean I was quite, quite certain, reasonably relieved.

And I was brushing my hair and I had bits in my hair and I thought, this is weird. So then we went to the doctors and he looked and he said, Oh yeah, I think it, it must be a bit of dermatitis he said, first. So I got some cream for dermatitis, nothing happened. And it was really itchy. And I went back and he said, Ah, you know, It must be nits, and gave me nit treatment. Didn’t work. Went back again, so this was over the course of probably six weeks. And he said, Ah, you know, Well, we’re gonna have to refer you to a dermatologist. Which is then, I went to the dermatologist [clears throat]. He then said it was seborrheic dermatitis to start with. Sent me away with treatment. Then we came back, nothing had changed. And so he took a biopsy the second time we went back to the dermatologist and I was only about ten or 11. I can just remember seeing my poor Mam’s face. So it was, like lying, I can remember clearly, I was lying on the table and I had a biopsy from under there [points to underarm]. And she looked like grey and I can remember the nurses saying, Get the mother a toffee, you know, She’s gonna collapse. [Laughs] But I was numb so I couldn’t feel it. So I felt fine.

So had doctors sort of explained that it was something that tends to stay with people for life or ?

Well, it wasn’t the doctors that actually mentioned that, it was actually my mother because she used to work in a medical centre herself in the 90s, so she did have a bit of experience when it came to medical conditions and she was quite familiar with psoriasis. While she never had it she knew patients who did, so if anything she was the one who told about, yes psoriasis was chronic. It isn’t short term.

And if anything she did suggest it when I first had it that, yes, it was psoriasis.

Yeah, so it was- [sigh] my dermatologist effectively told me that he didn’t know when it would go away. So he said, “I’ve given you all of these things to do, you’re doing all the right things; however the nature of psoriasis is that I just don’t know when it’ll go away. So, all you can do is just keep doing what you’re doing, and hope for the best.” Which isn’t the best sort of prognosis that you can be given. He said, “It may last-, it may last days, it may last weeks, it may last months, it may not go away. Hopefully it’ll calm down, but you might have-, you might have this for pretty much indefinitely.” Which was quite a scary thing to hear because at the time it was really bad. And if it had calmed down and stayed, that would have been okay, but if it had stayed as bad as it was and not really gone away, that would’ve-, that was quite scary, yeah. I didn’t-, I didn’t particularly want that to happen. So I think in hindsight I was relatively lucky, because I was given a sort of hopefully it’ll go down in the next few months’ prognosis. And it went away probably within a few weeks. Other than odd bits on my arms and my knees, everything was sort of calmed down relatively quickly. I say relatively, it was about a month, yeah. A month, six weeks.

Obviously psoriasis isn’t particularly a good-looking thing to have on your skin. Very like red, angry, blotchy. And when it started on my arms and on my chest, that wasn’t so bad because people don’t see it day to day, but when it started coming up my neck and onto my face, then people would say, “Oh Louis, what’s that on your face? What-, like what’s going on?” And at the start that was a bit [sigh], that was a bit irritating, but I think you get used to that quite quickly. I think, especially once I knew it was psoriasis, I could say, “Oh, got this, don’t know how long it’ll be there for, hopefully it’ll go away, that’s effectively it.” But before it was sort of confirmed I had psoriasis, I had to sort of say, “Well I’ve got a rash, don’t really know what it is, don’t know what’s going to happen to it.” So that was-, that was a bit more difficult saying, “I don’t know what it is, it’s just something that’s there.”

One of them was, I can’t remember which time round it was but one of them was very, very business-like about it, it was the first time. Cos I went, I went in there thinking I need to explain every detail, everything about the timeline and be very, very precise about it all and the doctor was more or less Yeh it’s psoriasis and I’d say a few more details, No it’s psoriasis. She was very, very business-like. And I sort of came out think oh that’s quicker, quicker than I expected. yeh I just felt they were quite shut-off about it whereas the next time I went round the doctor, they were both female but they were both so different, the second was much more kind of sat down, listened, engaged like listened to everything I had to say first and then kind of made a diagnosis whereas the first lady kind of cut me off when she knew what it was. so they were two quite different experiences, I’m not saying I came out the first one crying or anything but I did think oh that’s sounded business-like for a doctor.