I thought I'd share a personal physical problem I've been fighting over the past 2 months or so, which had compounded my stress and possibly depression problems. In a twist, this physical skin problem may also be part of a feedback loop where it is fed by the same stress-related issues I suffer. Skin eczema appears to be a fairly common problem here in Singapore, I've already encountered two friends who have shared their experiences with me - the first took 3 years or so to fully recover, and the second 6 months. When it began in earnest for me, it was an unknown and terrifying thing with scabs that would constantly water, and would not heal. I compounded the problem badly by attempting to self-medicate, peeling off scabs myself and treating the wounds by cleaning with alcohol swabs, and applying off-the-shelf antiseptic cream. Even with professional medical help now, it keeps recurring (albeit less intense each time.) My advice to any readers who might be going through something similar for the first time is to seek medical help, and to expect a recurrence problem in the form of a very frustrating and emotionally draining 6 steps forward, 5 steps back dance with the disease. My failure to expect such a thing hit me hard, the first time around.
It all started with a couple of flea bites on each side of my feet when I made my move out of Texas, and into Singapore. I had rescued a couple of stray cats (all with happy outcomes) when I was back at Oregon. Unfortunately, when the cats were gone the fleas had only myself as their source of food. It also turned out I was very very allergic to cat flea bites. In any event, despite my best efforts (it is a long complicated story) the fleas followed me all the way to Texas and landed a 2-bite "farewell" gift as I packed to return to Singapore.
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| Right foot after oral antibiotics. |
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Things seemed fine at first (outside of the intense reactions my body had to flea bites) on my arrival back in Singapore, but soon both wounds slowly started developing scabby skin areas that occasionally watered, but wouldn't heal. During this time, I didn't think too much about it and kept my usual routine of wearing socks and sneakers. Months later, the left wound appeared to start healing very grudgingly and for whatever reasons, I thought I could accelerate the process by treating the right foot myself (see first paragraph.) It had the reverse effect, and soon even my left foot's wound got much much worse. That was when I sought professional medical help. Now scientifically, there isn't a whole lot of agreement on the causes for severe eczema of all forms but I was told severe stress and a childhood asthma could have contributed along with the bites. My messing around with it very probably did bad things to it, but the doctors said nothing on that. I was given a steroid skin cream, and a course of antibiotics over 7 days. It appeared to work wonders, and the wounds started to dry up quickly, with the scabs peeling away naturally with healthy skin underneath. The picture shows what it looked like after the antibiotics took effect. All the discolored regions used to be thick scabs which watered, and refused to heal.
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| Round #2 - Just prior to the problem becoming worse. |
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| Round #2. The heels of the feet affected. |
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| Round #2. Fingers at their worst. |
Needless to say, I was overjoyed and looked forward to a full recovery. Unfortunately, that was not to be. Soon after the antibiotics was done, I started getting tiny and very itchy bumps on the skin at my finger joints on both hands. These quickly spread to all nine major joints on each hand, along with the palms. Simultaneously, the heels of my feet which were previously spared the sores started getting itchy bumps as well. This turned out to be round 2 of my fight with this problem. I had not expected it, but the literature did say these things tend to recur. It devastated me, but I managed to get my next appointment with the doctors which was in three months changed to an asap visit. Another 7-day course of antibiotics, a permanganate wash, and more steroid cream helped to keep this round under some control, though not as dramatically as in the first round. The swellings subsided, but healing has been relatively slow. As expected, after the course of antibiotics was completed, the disease started to creep back - thankfully, not as rapidly, and not as intensely.
So this puts me on round #3. The pictures will show what looks to be worse than round #2, but the discolored regions are just areas from round #2 that had been stained by the potassium permanganate solution treatment and look to be on the mend. Meanwhile, new sores continue to pop up in various places, some new but mostly old. They appear less extensive than round #2, but are crazy itchy. The remaining steroid cream I got since my last visit appears to help somewhat in pushing the new instances of the disease back, but temporarily. I'll be seeing the doctors again some time next week.
Anyway, things probably won't be over for me for a few months yet. I hope this will not last years. They do not look like they cover my entire hands and feet, but they are pretty widespread and they are quite debilitating. I've not made as much progress on my personal software coding and development projects as I'd have liked. And these will put me off a serious job hunt for a while. So yeah ... things have been pretty stressful for me lately. At least now I know what to expect over the next few months ... and knowing what to expect does help me cope better.
So let us hope this does not happen to any of you reading this post, but if it does ... let us hope your knowing what to expect would help to mitigate some of the stress and despair that ran through my mind as my hopes for a quick recovery were brutally crushed.
16 comments:
I am sorry to hear that you are going through this. It sounds like Singapore triggered a lot of these sensitive allergies and eczema issues. Personally, I have been trying very hard to get my Microsoft product key unlocked over here, but the staff--nearly all Pinoys and Pinays--actually have been causing me to go around in circles over and over again without any resolution. They say 'foreign talent', but well, I am still not convinced. I have not been able to do anything to improve the situation at all. Personally, I think that I am going to forget about the product key I bought in Canada, and then, to get this issue resolved elsewhere outside Singapore.
Thanks. Things are still see-sawing between good and bad, and it has been really frustrating. Just last evening, things looked like it had calmed down to the point I no longer needed anti-itch medication, but it seriously flared up overnight.
Ouch on the product key. I'm a little surprised it doesn't just work for you. I've not had any problems with my Windows 7 installation I brought back with me from the States. Then again, it might be best if you had it resolved in Australia where I expect customer service would be more inclined to help you than harboring any suspicions you were trying to cheat them.
On this related note, I was quite surprised to hear from my recent taxi ride (which I phoned-in for) that some Singaporeans make calls to taxi companies, and then cancel the moment they see a cab (presumably the cab they summoned) coming to their location just so they would save the 3 bucks calling fee. That's some serious douchebaggery, regardless of how someone might feel about cab availability or prices in the country. Apparently it happens often enough (still rare, I suspect) that a good number of cab drivers know these things can and will happen. For me, it is "wow ... just ... wow ..."
I think that after the years away--10 years at least--from Singapore, it dawned on me that a lot of the social problems existent in Singapore are basically brought about by Singaporeans on themselves. Every time you have the 'growth-and-share' package being disseminated as a means of advocating pork-barrel politics and government sympathy in Singapore, you start having Singaporeans defending the government en masse, or even making uninformed statements such as that 'if you dislike this move, you can return the money'(which is already ours to begin with because it is taxpayers' money).
But that aside, I think that Singaporeans have learned to settle for this "take advantage of everyone". It is not only irresponsible, but wrong.
That has more or less been my experience too. To be fair, a decent number of friends appear to think the same way I do on such matters, but they also appear to be willing to live with it.
Personally, that's partially the reason why I'd prefer to just leave. I do not consider myself strong enough to walk that lonely road to try to change the mind of an entire country blinded by themselves, and shackled to a tendency to inaction by an inordinate reverence to rank and power.
The term for this kind of psychological syndrome is "Stockholm Syndrome"(being held hostage and captive to your captors emotionally and even feeling sorry for them at times). It happens to a lot of rape and molest victims who actually start blaming themselves at one point or another by wondering if they did "seduce" or end up "tempting" the perpetrator of the crime, and sometimes, even make excuses and narratives to excuse them away. Co-dependency is largely a psychological default that most humans have learned to accept, and more so, in Singapore, and hence, I left in 2004 like you. I could not simply just tolerate all that whining, because it was more than just annoying. Right now, whenever back in Singapore, I just say that I am now 'Canadian' or 'Australian', since it forms my cultural identity more, and plus, I do not think that saying that I am 'true blue Singaporean' even helps me to get along with Koreans or the girls over there. People start judging you based on nationality and race anywhere, and it does not seem fair to let one's nationality and upbringing become a stumbling block. 5 years down the road, once I get the AUS citizenship, I will change my name to a less Chinese-sounding one, and since I do not technically look that much Chinese anyway (I do not have the bulbous Chinese nose or the slit cut eyes of most East Asians, since I have almond-shaped double-eyelidded eyes from my mother's side of the family). It will be done in the name of expediency.
It baffles me a lot as to why if Singaporeans are so aware of these problems, that they still vote for the current party in power, and even support them full-scale. A friend used to tell me that the media has brainwashed many into this kind of defence mode reasoning in which if you do anything as much as say that the growth-and-share packages and all those money belong to taxpayers and that we can take it and vote for the opposition, they(being friends and extended family) will turn on you and even ostracize you openly. I learned it the hard way, but am still openly subversive in my ideological leanings, and hence, even if I am not exactly getting involved in anything political and neither do I intend to ever, I gloat whenever there are moments of schadenfreude such as the subway system malfunctioning and people walking all the way in the dark of the tunnel from one station to the next. People deserve to suffer what they believe, especially if those are outright and blatant lies.
That is my perception of the system too - the moment you utter anything that sounds like criticism, the automatic (and I'll argue - conditioned) reaction from people who either do not agree (or do not want to agree) with you is to attempt to erase your point of view from the public sphere. Conversely, the people who do agree with you seem to automatically think you ought to be running for office *groan*.
Having said that, I'll note that general politics and governance is more complicated than a small set of socio-political issues. I would certainly not vote based on single issues. A vote from me has to represent support for a broad basket of local and national issues a candidate claims to lean toward. The main problem I see (which is the other partial reason I wish to leave) is that there are no alternative political forces in Singapore that truly believe in civil political discourse, nor present a political platform with a clear set of principles on governance with which I can (mostly) agree. The supporters of the other parties here pretty much react to any comment that was not utter blind support in exactly the same way I had described above.
For example, I had tried engaging with Kenneth Jeyaratnam's Reform Party as a sympathetic critic, and I hit the same stone wall with his crazed supporters that I imagine I would have encountered with members of the ruling party. My comments (and a few other critics trying to be helpful) even got deleted, which left a laughably incoherent comment thread where his supporters seemed to respond to nobody. I had also commented once on a Facebook page of Vincent Wijeysingha that he ought to consider his facts more carefully before he went running with it (If I remember correctly, I think in some video he forgot to convert his units in a population density example correctly, resulting in an impossibly high density number at smaller scales ... and then proceeded to ask his audience to imagine what that kind of density would be like without experiencing a "whoa, that HAS to be wrong!" moment.) I got a stony silence for my comment, which was intended to be supportive and helpful.
So personally, it had all been extremely frustrating and futile. I made the decision that Singapore was pretty much a basket case where an operational democracy was concerned based on how people, especially my Singaporean friends react to issues, and to my comments on those issues.
Constructive criticism is alien to Singapore. Destructive criticism is common though over there. It would do you immense good to detach yourself from that setting.
Yah, that's how I feel. I try to shut up, I try to leave, and I try to do both. There is too much grief from doing otherwise.
While I can understand the emotion behind wanting to be correct (I feel it too,) too many of the people with an overwhelming need to always be "in the right" are in positions of authority. And there being too much reverence for authority here only compounds the problem.
A friend used to point this out to me. He saw what I had said and written over my posts on the chats with him, and noted that I use "try" a lot. I trust him a lot as a person, since as you might remember, when I went through bad encounters with that sociopath former friend whom I now deleted all links to and installed permanent blocks now with effect from yesterday(after immense thought), that friend actually said that there are people with malice which I cannot see beyond what they claim or say, and that malice cannot be 'read'. But back to what he had said to me, he said that I tended to use too much "try", and with regards to the use of the word "try", it is distinctly different from "do", and hence, it does indicate a possible failure to arrive at a goal because I install my own roadblocks subconsciously in my language and words.
In other words, there is a difference between "I try" and "I do", not just technically and physically, but also, emotionally and psychologically. Saying that "I tried my best" is not the same in signification as "I did my best".
Funny story - just as your comment registered in my email, I was watching on youtube a documentary on the Star Wars saga! "Do or do not, there is no try!" as Yoda puts it.
Seriously though, maybe it is just me but I am a lot more comfortable with being brutally honest with/about myself when it is warranted. I too tend to use the word "try," and probably (another word I often use) a little too often. In this particular case though, I think it is warranted because I know I did try, and I know I did fail when I tried :).
You could argue however, that I may not have tried hard enough ... but honestly, I do what most people do - I commit as much effort into something as I am comfortable with. Since coming to terms with that idea, I have generally stopped accusing people of being lazy or uncommitted, but started asking them why and if they would like to change their minds. And I now often ask myself the same.
Nah, I am not saying that you are not trying hard enough. To do so would be very Singaporean, because Singaporeans thrive a lot on condemning someone or judging someone if he or she does not get to the stage of success as they define it. I went through that before and realized that even well-educated people who got their PhDs overseas can behave like that in Singapore, and stopped trying to bother about them. What I was doing was merely to point out to you a mere glitch in vocabulary and the cognitive functions that it is capable of triggering.
I am barely back for a few days or so, and even while working out in the gym, I get the strange sense of something beyond the really rare few of people that I can even talk to. Singapore is built on the 'privilege club' mindset, and if you do not belong to a group or 'privilege club', you lose out on alleged benefits simply because you do not integrate and fit in(in other words, conform). It goes beyond a Chinese thing, because in places like China and Taiwan, individualism is in fact stronger than in Singapore, and even in South Korea, this sense of collectivism is not a selfish 'I integrate for my own sake' type, and people do things more for the community out of their own free will.
By the way, about your eczema issue, I remember having something pretty bad as well. It was aggravated by my use of pimple cream then about more than a decade ago on areas where I did not even have any pimples or post-extraction redness, and that caused my whole skin to flush. The main point is to drink as much water as possible, avoid soap, and stick to very mild cleansers(even something with a little oil or plant emollient in it would help. In other words, milky or gel-based cleansers instead of foaming cleansers for the body and face...). Normally, moisturizers should be fragrance-free too. I wish that I could help with the little that I know. Talking about moisturizers, you might want to check out Innisfree which has a minimalist range for very sensitive skin which can probably be applied to the body as well(I think that it is basically very very minimal, and I used it before in winter). It might help you out.
Thanks. I got moisturizers that were prescribed by my doctors. The brand is "QV" and it is supposed to be non-hypoallergenic.
Meanwhile I've been avoiding anything that irritates me. That had been pretty tough to tell about 1-2 weeks ago when every part of my hands and feet seemed to itch, and also seemed to itch whenever I touched most things. So for a while I was trying not to touch anything. Now that the itch has more or less disappeared from my hands, and are mostly localized on my feet, things have become easier on me.
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