‘One morning I woke up a couple months ago and basically my whole face had just totally swelled up,’ Courtney Celine Bray recalls. ‘The corners of my eyes were very dry so they had sort of sealed shut.’
The 26-year-old, who is based in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, remembers the painful episode and having to hoover up flakes of skin ‘at least five, six times a day’ because every time she moved, ‘there were flakes everywhere.’
‘It’s just been a constant battle,’ she said.
Courtney has been suffering from eczema across her whole body since childhood, with the skin condition causing ‘intense’ flaking. She often has to clean up red raised rashes, open wounds and sores and severe itching that causes her skin to bleed.
When she was 23, Courtney lost her job as a dental receptionist because her eczema worsened and was severely impacting her mental health. She was frequently late because of her lack of sleep.
Losing her job three years ago marked a low point and caused her to undergo therapy for depression.
‘My skin started flaring, it was weeping and oozing a lot, I was getting really itchy rashes and a lot of open sores and wounds and it was becoming a lot more widespread, so I was getting it a lot more on my arms and neck,’ she shares.
‘Because it was getting on top of me, I was getting very down and I was having a lot of issues with my mental health and I was being late to the job a lot.
‘When you have severe eczema, sleeping is just a nightmare, but then I wouldn’t know how to explain it to my bosses so I would just say I’m really sorry I’m late, and I did end up losing the job.’
She now works at a call centre but has been on sick leave for the past month because her skin has been ‘the worst it’s ever been’, leading her to worry about paying her mortgage if she is forced to remain off work.
Courtney says she finds the whole experience ‘quite isolating’ because it prevents her from going out on dates and meeting up with friends. At times she feels too depressed to leave her home at times.
‘I don’t want people to see it and be like, “oh my God what’s that?,”’ she said.
‘If I did have to go out, I’d be very anxious about it because I know people can see my skin and obviously in my mind, I think everyone’s going to look at me.”
‘I’ve just stopped any kind of dating or seeing anybody because you don’t want to meet someone new and be like, oh, sorry about my face.
‘It can make you very depressed, especially when I’m stuck at home because I’m just sat thinking about, is it ever going to get better?’
What is eczema?
Eczema is a non-contagious, inflammatory dry skin condition that affects people of all ages. The most common form, atopic eczema, affects 1 in 5 children and 1 in 10 adults in the UK, according to the National Eczema Society.
Symptoms include unbearably itchy skin and during a flare-up the skin can also be red, cracked and sore. Those with the condition may also experience anxiety, depression, sleeplessness and other mental health problems as result of eczema and its symptoms.
Courtney does not have the option of covering up her eczema using makeup as this severely irritates her skin.
‘A few years ago, if I was going out or something, I’d risk putting some mascara or eyeliner on, and within hours I’d have to take it off again because it made my eyes red and inflamed so it just became not worth it,’ she said.
Courtney has dealt with eczema since she was around six months old, but the skin condition ‘took a nosedive’ when she was 16 because of the stress of studying for her GCSEs and became ‘more obvious’ to other people.
‘It got quite sensitive, so wearing clothes was an issue so I would show up to school wearing baggy leggings and a hoodie just because it was the only thing that felt comfortable,’ she said.
Courtney, who also has coeliac disease and avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, has tried numerous steroid creams and even underwent ultraviolet light therapy several years ago, which did improve her skin condition ‘slightly’ but the eczema has worsened since then.
One silver lining has been sharing her story publicly on social media after searching for eczema content herself and finding people on Instagram. Being public about the struggles of eczema makes her feel like she has a support system and she hopes she can make others in a similar situation feel a bit better.
Earlier this year, Courtney made an Instagram, @theitchycoeliac, and a website, as she struggled to find people sharing their personal experiences with her conditions.
‘I noticed when I was doing research into coeliac disease and my eczema, there are a lot of sites that give you the facts and the medical advice, but there wasn’t so much about the personal experience with it,’ she explains.
Joining the online eczema community and sharing updates about the struggles has improved her confidence, helped her accept her conditions, and provides her with a purpose.
‘It could make someone else feel better to see skin like mine.’
Do you have a story to share?
Get in touch by emailing [email protected].
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