This post is the second in a series of 9. If you want to read the first post you can find it here. If you want to read the third post scroll to the bottom for a link.
In December 2010 I had a cold. It came on strong, and within three days it was gone. I was working as the production manager and executive chef for a catering company at the time. Since it was December I worked a lot of hours, sometimes from 6 am to 11 pm or later. Needless to say I was glad the cold left so quickly.
About 10 days later, on the 20th, I noticed some little spots on my legs. They itched a little, and resembled small zits. There weren't just a couple spots, there were lots of them. No, not just lots, they were all over my legs, from just above my knee down to the bottom of my ankle. After using some over the counter medication lotions I went to the urgent care as no doctor in my network could see me for nearly a month. The diagnosis was folliculitis. I was given an antibiotic and sent on my way. After a few days there wasn't any improvement; the spots were worse than they had been.
I went back to the clinic sometime between Christmas and New Years. The attending doctor referred me to a dermatologist. I got in the next day. His diagnosis was HSP, Henoch-Schönlein Purpura. It’s a nasty disease. You can look it up if you want to learn more than I share about it. As a warning I've included a picture of what happened to me at one point. It's fairly graphic, so if you get sick at the sight of bodily injury, don't look (and have fun not not looking and reading the post).
The basics of HSP are that your immune system produces too much immunoglobulin. The blood, rich with immunoglobulin, then attacks various parts of your body. In my case it was the veins and capillaries (this is the most common symptom). The blood then leaves the veins and capillaries and leaves through the pores in your skin, creating the purpura, spots on the skin. They look like little red zits all over your skin. It normally onsets about 10 days after one has an upper respiratory illness, such as the common cold.
This is a child's disease that is rare in children, and even more rare in adults. When you get this as an adult (as in my case) it can be rather horrific. My body took the rather horrific approach. This picture is just a sampling of what happened. It is from my second onset. You can see some of the stains from the prior onset. The stains are much smaller than the original wounds.
The patch at the far right of the picture is a stain from the first onset. All of the surrounding dark area was gone, along with the patch, just like you see happening on and below the ankle.
In December 2010 I had a cold. It came on strong, and within three days it was gone. I was working as the production manager and executive chef for a catering company at the time. Since it was December I worked a lot of hours, sometimes from 6 am to 11 pm or later. Needless to say I was glad the cold left so quickly.
About 10 days later, on the 20th, I noticed some little spots on my legs. They itched a little, and resembled small zits. There weren't just a couple spots, there were lots of them. No, not just lots, they were all over my legs, from just above my knee down to the bottom of my ankle. After using some over the counter medication lotions I went to the urgent care as no doctor in my network could see me for nearly a month. The diagnosis was folliculitis. I was given an antibiotic and sent on my way. After a few days there wasn't any improvement; the spots were worse than they had been.
I went back to the clinic sometime between Christmas and New Years. The attending doctor referred me to a dermatologist. I got in the next day. His diagnosis was HSP, Henoch-Schönlein Purpura. It’s a nasty disease. You can look it up if you want to learn more than I share about it. As a warning I've included a picture of what happened to me at one point. It's fairly graphic, so if you get sick at the sight of bodily injury, don't look (and have fun not not looking and reading the post).
The basics of HSP are that your immune system produces too much immunoglobulin. The blood, rich with immunoglobulin, then attacks various parts of your body. In my case it was the veins and capillaries (this is the most common symptom). The blood then leaves the veins and capillaries and leaves through the pores in your skin, creating the purpura, spots on the skin. They look like little red zits all over your skin. It normally onsets about 10 days after one has an upper respiratory illness, such as the common cold.
This is a child's disease that is rare in children, and even more rare in adults. When you get this as an adult (as in my case) it can be rather horrific. My body took the rather horrific approach. This picture is just a sampling of what happened. It is from my second onset. You can see some of the stains from the prior onset. The stains are much smaller than the original wounds.
The patch at the far right of the picture is a stain from the first onset. All of the surrounding dark area was gone, along with the patch, just like you see happening on and below the ankle.
I had so many purpura in such concentration that it created massive open wounds all over my calves, shins, ankles, and up to my knees, on both legs. When I say open wounds I mean it ate all of my skin (as you can see above) in large chunks. The bleeding through my pores was so violent that it caused necrosis of the skin.
The immune problem eventually resolved on it’s own. However, I required months of therapy at a wound clinic to recover full use of my legs. To this day I am still famous there. You see, they raised me up in this chair and started to clean out the wounds. The scraping and cleaning was so painful that I fainted while in the raised chair. I thought this was bad enough, but it just got worse from there. The next thing that happened hurt, like a sharpened stick stuck in my back.
To see what happened next read the next post, the third in the series.
The immune problem eventually resolved on it’s own. However, I required months of therapy at a wound clinic to recover full use of my legs. To this day I am still famous there. You see, they raised me up in this chair and started to clean out the wounds. The scraping and cleaning was so painful that I fainted while in the raised chair. I thought this was bad enough, but it just got worse from there. The next thing that happened hurt, like a sharpened stick stuck in my back.
To see what happened next read the next post, the third in the series.
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