“Absolute agony”: Beauty therapist left housebound from steroid cream withdrawal
Beauty therapist and mother Karyn Flett said she has been “addicted” to steroid creams for over 40 years.
In an attempt to ease her painful eczema, Flett revealed she had to wear a balaclava to contain her weeping skin.
She began suffering from eczema patches on her face, hands and joints at age 11 and was prescribed topical steroid creams.
Flett, 52, has used the medication for decades to soothe her itchy and inflamed skin, but she claims she decided to quit using it after experiencing sweats and rashes similar to menopause symptoms.
The mum-of-three, from Fife, Scotland, said she was in “agony” when she went cold turkey and stopped using the medical cream in September 2022.
She revealed she went into topical steroid withdrawal and developed a burning rash all over her body and experienced shakes and sweats.
Flett was housebound for six months and unable to work due to her condition.
She said water felt like acid on her skin and it was so itchy she felt like she could “tear herself to the bone”.
The 52-year-old resorted to wearing a balaclava and full upper-body bandages for three months in order to keep her weeping skin from sticking to her pillow and sheets and to ease the pain of the relentless itching.
She shared that at 45 she began to worry about one of the risks she knew of steroids - that they thin the skin.
“I started thinking, ‘Right, I need to use these less’,” Flett said.
“I was going into bouts of withdrawal and getting these severe symptoms, such as shakes and sweats. I had symptoms similar to menopause.
“I went away in September and decided not to take my steroid cream, and went into full-blown withdrawal.”
Flett explained she had a burning rash from her feet to her entire body.
“My face was on fire, it was swollen. My eyes were really hard to open, they were swollen,” she said.
”I went off my food, and then I started going into full-blown shakes.
“When I travelled home, my clothes stuck to my skin.
“I blistered from my calf up to the back of my thigh and I could feel fluid running down my leg.”
When she arrived home, her husband had to help her into the shower and she had to rip the clothing off her skin.
“When I first got it, I couldn’t bathe all the time, it was just too painful. The water was like acid,” she said.
“I’ve always been a mum who likes to do my hair, makeup, get my lashes done, nails and look my best on a night out.
“That just left me. You lose all your self confidence, and you don’t know how you ever get back to the person you were.”
Flett described the first four to six months of withdrawal as being the worst.
“It’s been likened to being worse than a heroin addiction,” she said.
“You get a deep, absolute bone itch with topical steroid withdrawal.
“It’s absolute agony, you feel like you can tear yourself down to the bone.”
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