Thank you all for the welcome. I suffered for about 5 years with the only diagnosis being athlete's foot. Nothing helped and of course all the treatments made my feet worse. I started using using Trental..and Clobetasol cream last year when I was diagnosed. I thought I was cured! My feet were normal all summer and I even got a pedicure. Then we bought a hot tub and that was probably what started my downfall.. the meds stopped working and I am lucky to get a few hours of sleep. Why am I fine most days but at night the itching and burning becomes unbearable? I have an appointment next month to see my dermatologist and would like to be more knowledgeable about EM by then.
I’m so sorry smhcolo. ITs terrible you thought you were done worth this just to have it come back even worse. It is common for EM too worsen at night. It has something to do worth the natural changes in your body when it prepares for rest and while sleeping m I wish I could explain it better and joyfully someone here can do a better job of it.
There are other meds you can try with your doctor that will hopefully help help you.
Take care
Hi smhcolo,
I've just been though the 'athletes foot' thing. I thought I had it too, recently and was treating athletes foot with a spray. I've gone through I don't no how many bottles of the spray now, and the my foot is often still itchy and burning. This gets more intense in the late afternoons and evenings (mostly the tops of my my toes are the worst) and nothing has made a difference. At first I tried a cream (which made it worse), then the spray. I can only think now that it is not athletes foot. And that I the EM is getting worse in that particular part of my body. I find the spray soothing not long after I spray it on. Possibly because it's cool. Or has a cooling/numbing agent in it.
Just over a year ago I was convinced I had athletes foot (that was the first time) so the doctor took a swap of it and sent it to the lab. The results came back negative so I didn't have it. Despite this, I again thought I'd caught athletes foot late last year. But, I guess it's just another thing that I have to accept as being EM.
There are numbing creams available. I have read that some people with EM use them. I have stayed away from them as I have an adverse reaction (In the form of my worst sort of EM flares???) to some anaesthetics, including lidocaine. And the numbing cream I saw at the chemist had this ingredient. I have no idea why local and some twilight anaesthesias cause me to have EM reaction. I do think that maybe it's the preservatives they use?
I'm not much help to you but I have been there with the 'athletes foot' thing, too.
blue
Hi smhcolo,
First I had athlete's foot (AF) (March 2014), which improved with medication, then I got EM (June 2014), and in December 2014 the AF seems to have come back. I really think it is AF because the itching occurs between the toes only and again improved with medication (oral fluconazole). The itching occurs mostly after I go to sleep and it's so bad I have to take atarax (prescription antihistamine), which has the great side effect of making me sleep; don't know if it is some biorhythm thing, or if the flares are worse at that time, or something else still. A neurologist and an internal medicine doctor told me that the heat from the EM exacerbated the AF's itching symptoms. Fans really help cooling the skin between the toes but make the rest of the feet very dry.
Good luck!
Bad few nights...only relief is cool water and hope I fall asleep before the burning and itching begin again. Much stress lately so that I am sure makes everything worse. I am going to visit my parents - mom's 90th birthday - they keep their house at 75 - I will need to go walk in the snow barefoot!!!
I've only just become aware of how drying on the skin sitting in front of fans almost constantly can be. My skin is very dry all over. I'm probably clutching at straws but I've resumed using sorbelene cream instead of soap when showering. I stopped using it because I felt that the cream residue left on my skin was making me feel hotter. But now that I'm experiencing a new type of burning, I'm thinking that dry skin may be adding to the burning. hopefully moisturizing my skin will help this pain a bit.
blue
Tarsius said:
Hi smhcolo,
First I had athlete's foot (AF) (March 2014), which improved with medication, then I got EM (June 2014), and in December 2014 the AF seems to have come back. I really think it is AF because the itching occurs between the toes only and again improved with medication (oral fluconazole). The itching occurs mostly after I go to sleep and it's so bad I have to take atarax (prescription antihistamine), which has the great side effect of making me sleep; don't know if it is some biorhythm thing, or if the flares are worse at that time, or something else still. A neurologist and an internal medicine doctor told me that the heat from the EM exacerbated the AF's itching symptoms. Fans really help cooling the skin between the toes but make the rest of the feet very dry.
Good luck!
Hi!
I had a stressful episode and the intense itching+heat started much earlier, at 22h; more people have referred a connection between stress and flares, right?
Living in a hot country I often imagined clothing lined internally with fans :P (and I used to like heat!). Now I dream of shoes like that.
I'm using an emulsion to wash my feet but they're so dry now, even with the emulsion, and I don't use a fan all the time :S; a doctor recommended using Lipikar products to keep the skin's lipids in check.
Hey there! I'm in Colorado Springs too! What doctor do you see? I see Dr. Brian Sperber, Auto-Immune Dermatology, COS Dermatology Clinic.