My Skin Is Freaking Out!!!

[SOFcowgirl]

I've always dealt with eczema, but lately, it's been horrible. It's in my scalp (fortunately, I have very short hair, so it's easy to get the medicine on it), on my cheeks, and all down my back. Gross. But that's the least of my worries! Ever since I spent the week at county fair (I show horses), my skin has been freaking out. I was out in the sun a lot, but I'm a sunscreen freak, so no worries there. However, my face is continually dry, which I've never had problems with before, and my cheeks and nose are always flushed.
Possibly the weirdest thing of all is my fingers and wrists. The day after county, I noticed my fingers were itching. I looked down, and the insides of all my fingers and my wrists were covered in little bumps. These bumps are colorless, and they aren't filled with pus or anything, but they itch like crazy! My mom suggested it might be poison ivy, because she noticed a lot of it at the fairgrounds. The only thing wrong with this suggestion is that the bumps never broke open, and it's lasted way to long to be poison ivy. I've had these bumps for almost two weeks now.
Any ideas on why my skin is being so weird and how I can fix it?:confused:

[GanyGreenBean]

Have you been using any chemicals? I have chemical burns on my arms and between my fingers that itch like crazy. It's taken about 2 1/2 months to get them to heal some.

[karenlovessnow]

Do you take any medication that might cause you to react badly to the sun?
I know eczema can cause the tiny bumps you describe, but this sounds like it's really bad! Are you not able to see a doctor about it? You may need a prescription cream of some kind to help get past it. Keep us posted, please!

[SOFcowgirl]

No, I haven't been exposed to any chemicles. The bumps on my fingers are getting better, and I'm just using my perscription eczema medicine and benadryl for the itch. I also got a new face wash (I had been using my sisters, and my skin wasn't used to it), so hopefully that helps. If all this isn't cleared up by next week, though, I'm going to go see my dermatologist. I've always had crazily sensitive skin, hopefully this is just weirdness. My sister's skin is worse, though. If she scratches an itch, she gets long red welts where she scratched.

[Melanie]

My mom went through something similar about a year ago, and it was so bad that the skin on the soles of her feet would get all cracked and were bleeding. She could barely do anything with her hands, and putting them in water was hell. She had to wear gloves to do the dishes. She had bad patches of rashes all throughout her body. The doctors were baffled, none of the meds she tried would help. And eventually, the only thing they could do was give her nerve pills and sleeping meds to calm the pain and help her sleep. Eventually(months later) the doctors asked if she was in any kind of stress. Well....my sister had moved far way to Arizona(we live in NB Canada), and she wasn't on speaking terms with her mum in law(she felt as if she was nothing to her compared to others in her spouse's family). Of course she wasn't taking it into account at the time, but she then realised that she had to reduce her stress levels somehow. And the rashes and cracks in her skin eventually dissapeared. And yeah she has a history of excema...not terribly bad like my sister gets it, but it flares up once in a while.

So the question is, are you in any extreme amounts of stress?

[SOFcowgirl]

No, I'm a pretty stress-free person! My life's taken a definite up-turn: I got a great new job, I'm about to start college as a theatre major, I was cast in the first show at my college...
I was a bit of an emotional wreck when 4-H ended though. I've spent 10 years in the program, and it was hard to let it go. Maybe that's it... but I'm now an assistant leader, so no worries there.
I think it's just my skin being freaky on me again. Halfway through my sophmore year of high school, my eczema flared for no reason and my neck and back looked like snake-skin (and peeled like it too). It was pretty gross.

[Melanie]

There are also good types of stress. But if you don't think it's that then you can certainly rule it out. I hope you find something that works soon. :)