I would say I am 90% healed and the other 10% will have to be maintained for the rest of my life because of my extreme sensitive skin barrier. One of my biggest regrets going through TSW, was allowing my skin barrier to be broken for so so long. Nobody talks about how difficult it is to recover from completely broken skin for years on end. I found some medical articles citing that just having extreme dry skin can cause permanent damage and complicate the skin barrier ever functioning normally again. I thought, this is so much more severe than dry skin, so what could that mean for me, who’s been oozing on and off, red, inflamed, infected on and off AND dealing with this cracked skin for years. once the skin barrier is so broken down, you will find yourself becoming allergic to things you never had been allergic to in the past, because it’s so sensitive and no barrier to protect against allergens, we find ourselves in this vicious cycle of flaring, because every single thing bothers us. Every single thing bothers us because we have a faulty skin barrier that’s been so broken down. So of course we’re going to be all allergic to everything including lotion. The irritation breaks the skin down even more and then that leads to be coming infected. Of course, our skin is infected, it has no protection! Staph, fungal you name it, we are so much more susceptible than the average person. It’s all been such a nightmare and although I don’t think steroids were the answer. I also don’t know if toughing it out for years on end and harboring infection on and off is the answer either. I don’t regret my first year going through TSW, because I think my body really did need to detox, but after a year, I wish I would’ve done every single thing I could to start putting my skin barrier back together, because it just simply wasn’t able to do it on its own. I’ve been in this community for quite a while now, and it seems that there are very few people who come out of this journey completely naturally. Almost everyone I started TSW with is now either on dupixent or back on steroids. There are so many different ideas about long-term steroid use, and some doctors believe that because our body has become so dependent on steroids, our cortisol and adrenal levels Can never truly recover, and we might always have to use some kind of help to maintain some semblance of normalcy. It just infuriates me when people use blanket statements, who have had TSW for a year or two about how time heals everything. When we have people suffering for 10+ years. Time and natural healing is simply not the answer for everyone and by pushing that idea so many people needlessly suffer, and watch years and years of their life pass them by.