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So Miss T’s eczema has been pretty good for the last few months and she’s really been looking forward to wearing short sleeves and dresses this summer  (a major achievement as any eczema sufferer will tell you).  However after two bouts of impetigo needing both oral and topical antibiotics, we now have a new problem with her skin. 

When a few little blister like spots started to appear at first I thought it was eczema. Then as they spread I wondered if she had chicken pox again.  A quick Google search and I finally realised that these lesions were in fact the virus Molluscum contagiosum and that they often get mistaken for chicken pox as they are blister like and have an umbilicated centre.

So apparently this pesky virus is really common in children. Having chatted with some of my friends I know that their children have had them too.  However they only had 3 or 4 spots which resolved pretty quickly, whereas miss T’s started on her arms and have now spread all over her body.  She is covered in them, poor little thing. Arms, legs, tummy and just to upset her even further, they’ve now spread to her face too.

Patches of eczema have started to form around the spots so she’s incredibly itchy and frantically scratches the Molluscum.  This spreads the virus and has led to some of them getting infected.  It’s such a horrible cycle and she is so fed up with it.  It nearly broke my heart when she asked me why her friends have such perfect skin but hers is so "horrible".

A trip to the doctor confirmed the diagnosis and we were told that there is NO treatment for Molluscum. We were just given an antibiotic cream for the ones that she has scratched and have become infected.  We’ve also been told no swimming in public pools until the infected spots have calmed down (the sea is fine) and she should use her own set of towels at home after baths and showers.  Unfortunately children with eczema tend to get lots more spots and they last much longer too.  The spots commonly last 6-9  months before resolving but in some cases they have been known to last for years.

I would love to find a way to help clear up Miss T’s skin.  There are of course lots of weird and wonderful things suggested online, but the one thing that seemed to get a lot of positive comments is using apple cider vinegar.  Some of the advice says to put neat apple cider vinegar directly onto the lesions and then cover with a dressing for 24 hours.  However I’m pretty sure Miss T would scream the house down if I tried that.  So instead I’ve started adding 2 cupfuls of cider vinegar to a daily shallow bath.  For the first week I really think this was helping as the lesions started to get crusty and dry up. But we were getting through a LOT of cider vinegar! So we stopped for a week and the Molluscum came back with a vengeance.  So she's back in her eczema PJs to stop her scratching, and I'm off to buy shares in apple cider vinegar to see if we can get it under control.  It's got to be worth a try. I’ll keep you posted!

Have you or your child suffered from Molluscum?  Did you find anything that helped? Any ideas gratefully received!

Eczema can have a huge effect on both our work and personal lives and tracking down the triggers for flare-ups can be incredibly difficult.  I was contacted by Kerrison from Australia, who has had to put his university studies on hold while dealing with his severe eczema.  He’s used this time productively developing an app to help track and record eczema symptoms which I think is a fantastic idea.

Building a mobile app for Eczema sufferers By Kerrison Garcia  

I have spoken to a few health professionals and not many agree that there is a correlation between diet and eczema. Many people I know who suffer from eczema believe there is.  

I have had eczema since I was a child and only recently has it become very severe. It has become so bad that I had to take months off from work, and time off from my university studies. As many of you know, sometimes this condition can just engulf your life. 

Recently, I went to get tested for lactose intolerance and the test begins with you drinking a cup of water mixed with lactose, and then breathing into a bag at certain intervals for 2 and a half hours. Half way through this test I began getting symptoms of intolerance and my eczema began to weep. My eczema wasn’t weeping before the test and nothing changed in that time frame. The only suspect was the lactose drink, so I knew there must be some correlation. 

It’s difficult to determine whether what you’ve eaten is a trigger because we’re eating multiple meals a day, the eczema may not react immediately, and it’s just difficult to remember every single thing we’ve eaten every day. So I’ve built an app called Exma to make this process easier.  

The app allows you to keep a food diary by taking photos of your meals and also to record when you get itchy. You can look back and see what you’ve eaten and when you were itchy, and hopefully be able to find a trend.

 What I would like to be able to do is track more than just food. If we could track other variables such as weather, sleep, stress and more, we can get a better picture of your health and how this is affecting your eczema. Even the possibility to bring custom reports to your health professional to get a more tailored treatment. 

The mobile app is free and is currently in Beta so you may run into a few issues here and there. The first version is built for Android and can found in the Google Play Store here (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exmaapp). If you have any feedback or feature requests, or just want to have a chat send me an email at ​exmamobileapp@gmail.com or you can find me on twitter at @kerritaco (twitter.com/kerritaco).