Treatment for intense psoriasis icky, effective
Editor's note: Over several weeks, reporter Jessi De La Cruz is detailing the intensive treatment she is being given for psoriasis through a special program at the University of Michigan.
Sunlight, moisturizer and rest.
Those are the key ingredients in confronting the skin disease of psoriasis and putting it into remission.
I learned these basic yet not-so-simple rules during my first week at the Dermatology Treatment Center at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. After one week of intensive, outpatient treatment, my psoriasis was dramatically less painful and less visible.
Psoriasis is a noncontagious, autoimmune disease for which there is no cure. A person with psoriasis produces new skin cells four to six times faster than a healthy person. They build up into inflammed lesions -- or plaques -- which can be itchy, painful and unsightly. Some people also develop arthritis from their skin cells gone amuck, but that hasn't happened to me so far.
The UM Dermatology Treatment Center is one of about a dozen such facilities in the U.S. designed to intensively treat psoriasis and other skin diseases without hospitalization.
When I arrived at the hospital Jan. 9, my first task was to fill out paperwork, change into dark brown, hospital-issued pajamas and get a quick tour of the center. The tour consisted of being shown the locker room, the photolight beds, an activity room stocked with magazines, a TV and a DVD player, and a quiet room where someone was sleeping under a towel. I nodded, tried to smile and felt like running from the room in my hospital-issued booties.
Instead, I stayed and met the doctor and other patients. I was given the combination to a locker that would be mine for the duration of my treatment, a bar of Dove soap and a stout jar of heavy body cream.
When I was called for my intial treatment, I tentatively entered a room with lots of towels and jars of ointments. The nurse coated my body from head to toe with a steroid cream, wet my pajamas (which I put back on) with warm water and gave me a jogging suit to put over my pajamas. The suit would keep moisture in and speed up the cream's effectiveness, she said.
My time in the sauna suit lasted three days, two applications daily. I also was introduced to photolight therapy which is used to slow the growth of skin cells. In between, my body was slathered in coal tar to increase my skin's ability to absorb the light. And to top it off, literally, I had oil and steroids on my scalp and then had my head wrapped in plastic wrap and taped over to fight the psoriasis on my scalp.
I spent the week cold, squishy, slimy, damp and itchy. Toward the end of the week, I also found myself nursing a sunburn. The nurses like it if you're pink from the light because it means your skin cells are halting production. I was more a shade of magenta bordering on red by Wednesday -- so I didn't get light treatment again until Saturday.
After treatment on Saturdays, we are given a one-day reprieve from the goops, gels, oils, light and hospital food -- all starting again on Mondays at 7:30 a.m. sharp.
Although it sounds (and often feels) terrible, this treatment is working. My skin has not felt softer nor looked better in years. And I can commiserate with others who share this disease.
I'm becoming a master at Tetris, daytime TV and napping. I'm also learning how to manage a disease I will never be rid of but, hopefully, don't have to live with in the same way for the rest of my life.
