This is the situation writer Will Hayward has been in for a decade. At that time, he had “fake dawns” with possible diagnoses, but the issues remained year after year. Finally, Will made a major discovery about the condition of his skin during the Covid pandemic and has not looked back since. He shared his story with the title of our sister, Wales Online. READ MORE: Terrified locals hear “hysterical screams” as a boy is stabbed at a children’s birthday party on a residential street For the last 10 years my skin has been a bloody nightmare. Annoying, it’s not somewhere I can hide. It’s a slap in the middle of my face. It all started about 10 years ago. I would feel a burning sensation on my face, which within a few hours would result in horrible red spots appearing on my cheeks and nose. Sometimes I also had rashes with scratches on my neck and beard (or the pathetic amount of hair on my face that I count as a beard). There seemed to be no reason for this to happen. Sometimes it happened after a night out and so I stopped drinking for a few months – nothing happened. I tried all kinds of moisturizers under the sun – still nothing. I even tried to cover myself with sunscreen every time I left home in case it was caused by UV – nowt. I gave up dairy even though I really struggled without cheese. Beyond the joke, it’s hard to describe the impact that skin problem has had on my life. Physically it can be very painful, but it is usually just uncomfortable. The real impact is how it affects my self-esteem. I’m a young (equally) single. I have a lot of public work and I talk to the camera on a fairly regular basis. Spending most of my life as a mummy combination (from The Mummy) before being completely reborn and one of the cursed sailors from the Pirates of the Caribbean made me incredibly self-aware. When an outburst was worse, I would not want to leave the house, cancel the dates I had arranged and would never have my camera turned on when making video calls. Four years ago I had my first of many fake dawns when a dermatologist diagnosed me with rosacea. This condition causes redness or flushing and visible blood vessels in your face and can also create small, pus-filled lumps. He gave me some different creams to deal with and I left in the hope that this issue might be resolved. He also suggested that I quit caffeine because it is a common trigger for rosacea. So I put on the creams, quit the caffeine (it sucks hard, especially since it contained all the chocolate) and my face got a little better. However, some problems remained. Although the low level of redness was slightly reduced, large flares were just as severe and occurred just as often. The other problem was that although my cheeks were better, the redness and spots on my neck and chest were just as bad. So I went to the dermatologist again. This time I was also diagnosed with seborrheic dermatitis – a condition that is often found in people with rosacea. The problem is that one of the treatments for this, steroids, makes rosacea much worse. In short, I maintained my decaffeinated diet, my antibiotic cream for rosacea and added a special shampoo to the mixture. However, despite this, things seemed to be getting worse by the time we got into the lockdown. Over the weeks my skin has improved significantly. Occasionally, it was still going a little bad, but in those early days of the pandemic my skin was better than it had been for years. I did not understand but I was not complaining! Then, as the world began to open up again, I started to go out more and my skin gradually got worse again. This was especially true when I returned to the office after a year and a half last fall. I suddenly went back to the beginning, in fact, it was worse. This is what my skin looked like when I was working from home (I’m on the right): Will Hayward (right) (Image: Will Hayward) This picture shows how damaged my skin is: Will red skin (Image: Will Hayward) Then things got extremely flaky: Flake Leather (Image: Will Hayward) Enraged, I went to my doctor who prescribed me antibiotics and referred me to another dermatologist. This doctor suggested I have a patch test. If you have not seen them before, you basically have many different potential allergens stuck to your back on Monday (including a range of chemicals like nickel), all removed on Wednesday and then you return on Friday to see which parts of your skin had an allergic reaction. . Even if there were no allergic reactions, this procedure is very inconvenient. You can not take a shower, you have adhesive tape all over your back and you have to sleep in front. However, there was an allergic reaction, two in fact, and by Wednesday two spots on my back were really painful, almost burning. From this we found out that I am allergic to two things:
Methylisothiazolinone (let’s call it chemical) 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol (let’s name this chemical two)
So since I was really allergic to these chemicals, the next step was to find out if it was really what was affecting my face. To do this I had to go for three months without exposure to these two chemicals to see if my skin improved. Chemical two was not very difficult to avoid, it was used long ago 20 years ago, but it was phased out because so many people reacted to it. The chemical was a completely different beast. It is in a huge range of household products that includes soaps, shower gels, shampoos and sunscreens in which it is used as a preservative. As soon as I got home, I went through everything in my house and removed all the products that contained it and there were quite a few, including quite wet and furniture varnishes. As anyone who has tried to read the tiny writing on the back of a bottle can tell, it is difficult to distinguish the ingredients, especially when they are full and look good enough. My task became even more difficult because the chemical has so many alternative names that mean the same thing, such as: Acticide MBS / MBR, Algucid CH50, Amerstat 250, Euxyl K 100, Fennosan IT 21, Grotan K / TK2, Isocil (R ) PC, Kathon CG / LX / WT, Lonzaserve (R) PC, Mergal K7, Metatin GT, Mitco CC 31/32 L, Neolone CapG / 950 / MxP, Optiphen, Parmetol A / DF / K, Piror P109, Promex Alpha / BM, Proxel AQ / PL / XL2, Salicat MM / MI-10 / K100 / K145, Salimix MCI, Sharomix MI /, T / MCI and Special Mx 323! I finally cleaned my house of everything and the skin was going great. Then I went back to the office (I had not been in for a while due to Covid). Within a few hours of being in the office my skin started to burn and that night I was back to square one. I was so upset. How the hell did that happen? Then I remembered that inside the men’s toilet there was one that automatically sprayed air fresheners. Knowing that the chemical was very common in air fresheners, I asked the owner of our building. It turns out that the spray contained the chemical meaning that every minute, three of these sprays were actually putting water on my face with something to which I was extremely allergic. Luckily I have a really supportive employer and he removed the product. Now I sit at the desk and write this article and for the first time in years I am at my desk and my skin does not hurt! Will Hayward (Image: Will Hayward) Now I can catch myself here. I have never been to the doctor before and I still continue to take antibiotics. However, I think that after a decade I finally understand my situation and I know how to manage it. In the coming months I will stop taking antibiotics and various creams and possibly bring chocolate back into my life (I would love my first Twix in four years) to see what impact it has. The reason I am writing this piece is because, although I have it more easily than many people with chronic skin problems, having a visible skin condition affects you far beyond physical discomfort. It erodes your confidence, it’s the first place people see you and it takes a much more confident person than me to stop it from reaching you. Hopefully this provides some insight into those who do not have such a problem and reasons to hope for those who do. Get more news, sports and what’s happening, sign up for our free email newsletters here Read more related articles Read more related articles
