I tried everything I could think of to clear it up. I took epsom salt baths. Added in clorox to my bath water to kill any surface germs. Switched body soaps, tried skin creams to keep my skin moist. I put watered down apple cider vinegar on the itchy places and tried wiping my arms and legs with clorox wipes. I tried various essential oils mixed in coconut oil. I tried cortisone creams and anti-fungal sprays. I was getting so very frustrated to be itching so strongly with no solution in sight. It wasn't constant. Some days it would feel normal but then when it flared I would get swollen eyes and dry patches on my eyes, forehead and around my mouth. These would turn scaly and if I pulled the skin off it would leave them feeling raw. My arms and legs were full of sores I'd scratched and re-scratched.
After several months of trying everything I could think of on my skin, I went back to the clinic. They weren't sure what I was dealing with but gave me treatments for scabies (even though I didn't have the contagiousness for that they said they'd try everything), antibiotic creams and stronger steroid antibiotics. They also put me on the list to see the dermatologist whenever he came back to our clinic. After two more appointments they found something that at least cleared up my initial sores on my chest, arms and face. Each time they asked me if I was allergic to any drugs I would tell them I had a reaction to a sulfa drug in my 30's.
In June, I finally got an appointment with the dermatologist and he did some sort of test on my back and it immediately raised up welts that amazed him. He said it was the strongest reaction he'd seen so far. He determined from that test that I'd been having an allergic reaction to something. He said the bumps I described as being like poison ivy were probably hives. So he prescribed medicines for allergies both air and food and then a face cream that he wanted me to put on my face at night like a night cream. The pharmacist told me it had sulfur in it but it wasn't the same as "sulfa" medicines that I'd been avoiding. I was skeptical but decided to try it. Immediately after using the face cream my face had a reaction. My eyes swelled and I got the dry patches again. I gave it several tries to be sure it was the cream and indeed it was so I discontinued using it.
My "Aha" moment came about 6 weeks later when I was driving home from a grocery run at the base. I was listening to the radio and they were talking about car inspections. One of the men in the discussion said, "you really need to get your tires checked regularly because they tend to get little cracks in them from all the salt and SULFUR in the air here. I got a big smile on my face and spoke to my car saying "That's It!!!!!! After I got home I did a google search on sulfur in the Okinawa air and sure enough, there is a pollution index that lists daily amounts of sulfur in the air. The area of our temporary apartment, Yogi, is one of the areas they collect their data from since it tends to be a higher sulfar area. It all made sense to me then. I'm allergic to sulfa drugs, then showed a reaction to a face cream with sulfur as its main ingredient so it makes sense to believe that all my skin ailments were caused by the sulfur in the air to which my skin is reacting. I've been taking claritin whenever I feel the itchiness returning and so far it's been working to keep the itching at a milder degree of itchiness.
I can't begin to tell you how happy I was to hear a reasonable solution as to why I was itching so much. I wasn't sure if I'd reacted to something in the ocean or if something was infesting under my skin but it'd been an 8 month mystery that I think I finally solved.
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