For the past 10 years, Will Hayward’s skin has been a nightmare. But it wasn’t something he could hide like a slap in the middle of his face.
Here, Will, who works as editor of Welsh Affairs for Wales Online, tells his story in the hope that he can help others suffering from similar problems that can cause great physical discomfort and affect self-esteem.
Read more: A 3-year-old Welsh boy eating a Kinder egg fell seriously ill and almost fell into a coma
It all started about 10 years ago. I felt a burning sensation on my face, which in hours would lead to horrible red spots on my cheeks and nose. Sometimes I also got scratched rashes that appear on my neck and chin (or the pitiful amount of facial hair that I consider a beard).
There seemed to be no reason for that to happen. Sometimes it happened after going out at night, so I gave up alcohol for a few months – nothing happened. I tried all kinds of moisturizers under the sun – again nothing. I even tried to cover myself with sunscreen every time I left the house in case it was caused by UV – now. I gave up dairy products, even though I really struggled without cheese.
Joke aside, it’s hard to describe the impact my 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 am a young single person. I have a lot of public work and I speak in front of the camera quite regularly. Spending most of my life looking like a combination of the mummy (from the movie The Mummy) before it was fully regenerated, and one of the damned pirates of the Caribbean made me very aware. When the attack was worse, I would not want to leave the house, cancel dates I had arranged, and never turn on my camera when making video calls.
Here’s what my skin looked like when I worked from home (it’s me on the right):
Will Hayward (Image: Will Hayward)
Four years ago, I had the first of several false dawns when a dermatologist diagnosed me with rosacea. This condition causes redness or redness and visible blood vessels in your face, and can also lead to small, pus-filled bumps. He gave me some different creams to deal with and I left hoping that maybe this problem would be solved. He also suggested that I give up caffeine because it is a common trigger for rosacea. So I applied the creams, gave up the caffeine (holy nonsense, which was difficult, especially because it included all the chocolate) and my face improved a little.
However, some problems remain. Although the low level of redness was slightly reduced, mega attacks 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 a dermatologist again.
This time I was diagnosed with seborrheic dermatitis – a condition that people with rosacea often have. The problem is that one of the treatments for him, steroids, makes rosacea much worse. In short, I maintained my caffeine-free diet, the rosacea antibiotic cream, and added a special shampoo to the mixture.
This image shows how bad my skin has become:
Will Hayward (Image: Will Hayward)
Then it became extremely crunchy:
Will Hayward (Image: Will Hayward)
But still, things seemed to get worse by the day we got stuck. Over the weeks, my skin has improved significantly. Sometimes it got a little bad, but in those early days of the pandemic, my skin was better than it had been for years. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t complain! Then, as the world began to reopen, I began to go out more, and my skin gradually deteriorated again. This was especially true when I returned to the office a year and a half last fall. Suddenly I went back to the starting position, it was actually worse.
In a rage, I went to my GP, who prescribed me antibiotics and referred me to another dermatologist. This doctor suggested I make a band-aid. If you haven’t seen them before, you basically have a lot of different potential allergens stuck on your back on Monday (including a number of chemicals, including things like nickel), all removed on Wednesday, and then back on Friday to see which ones. parts of your skin have had an allergic reaction.
Even if there have been no allergic reactions, this process is terribly inconvenient. You can’t bathe, you have duct 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 points on my back were really painful, almost burning.
From this we learned that I am allergic to two things:
- Methylisothiazolinone (let’s call this chemical)
- 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol (let’s call this chemical two)
So given that I was really allergic to these chemicals, the next step was to find out if they were actually what affected my face. To do this, I had to spend three months without exposure to these two chemicals to see if my skin had improved. Chemical 2 was not too difficult to avoid, it was used many 20 years ago, but it was discontinued because so many people reacted to it.
The chemical was a very different beast. It is in a huge range of household products, including soaps, shower gels, shampoos and sunscreens, in which it is used as a preservative. As soon as I got home, I inspected everything in my house and removed all the products that contained it, and there were a lot of them, including a lot of liquid and furniture polish.
Like anyone who has tried to read the small inscriptions on the back of the bottle, they can tell you that it is difficult to distinguish the ingredients, especially when there are many and they look quite similar. My task was even more difficult because the chemical has so many alternative names that mean the same thing, including: 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!
My skin is much better now (Image: Will Hayward)
Eventually I cleaned my house of everything and the skin did great. Then I went back to the office (I hadn’t been in for a while because of Covid). Within hours of being in the office, my skin began to burn, and by that night I was back to square one. I was so damn upset. How the hell did that happen? Then I remembered that there was one of those automatic spray air fresheners inside the men’s room. Knowing that the chemical is very common in air fresheners, I consulted with the owner of our building. It turned out that the spray really contained the chemical meaning that every minute three of these sprays essentially lead my face to something I was super allergic to.
Fortunately, I have a really supportive employer and they removed the product. Now I am sitting in the office and writing this article and for the first time in years I am at my desk and my skin does not hurt!
Now maybe I’m ahead of myself here. I still haven’t gone back to the doctor and I’m still on antibiotics. However, I think that after a decade I finally understand my condition and know how to manage it. In the coming months, I will give up antibiotics and various creams and eventually bring chocolate back into my life (hell, I would love my first Twix in four years) to see what the impact will be.
The reason I wrote this piece is that although it is easier for me than many people with chronic skin problems, the visible condition of your skin affects far beyond physical discomfort. This undermines your confidence, this is the first part of you that the world sees, and it takes a much more confident person than me to stop this from happening to you. We hope that this gives some idea of those who do not have such a problem, and reasons to hope for those who do.
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