Back toWatch dermatologist Dr. Day lead a discussion about living with psoriasis.
Transcript
Don't let it take over your life. You know, you are not psoriasis. It's something that you deal with.
Hi, I'm Dr. Doris Day. I'm a board certified dermatologist in New York City. And today I'm here with Deidra, Apolonia, and Christopher,
and we're talking about living with psoriasis. My name is Deidra. I am from South Florida.
I officially got diagnosed in June of 2020. But I started noticing symptoms maybe about seven months prior.
My name is Christopher. I live in Hillsboro, Oregon. I was diagnosed with psoriasis when I was 12 years old, so
back in 1998-ish. Hi, my name is Apolonia. I live in California. And I have had psoriasis for about 15 years now.
The first time you started noticing psoriasis, what was going through your mind? Being 11 years old, you kind of just don't know what that means.
As I got older, I had a hard time. And Christopher, what about you? There obviously was a lot of ridicule and ugh, what is that?
But it really actually got bad in my adult years, go figure, right? Initially I thought it was maybe a fungal infection.
The doctor thought it was a fungal infection as well. And it wasn't. One of the things that I see with my patients
is that psoriasis really does have an impact on their life. As far as like social life and work, I mean,
I just wear long pants all the time. So it didn't matter what the temperature was. My psoriasis got the worst during the pandemic.
It was covering a lot of my face. So even with the mask, it impacted my self-esteem
quite a bit. So my psoriasis was very severe. So it covered over 85% of my body.
My main goal was to basically hide it from my friends and family. And that definitely impacted relationships.
What advice do you have for people who might be watching or even newly diagnosed or going through it and feeling a little bit down about it?
Don't let the side effects of biologics scare you away. I think the disease will tear you apart a lot faster than a few side effects will.
The advice I would give someone would be to trust the process and be patient with yourself
and just be kind to yourself also. My advice would be along the same line with Apolonia. You know, just be gentle with yourself.
I know there's a good bit of confusion that comes with it. But definitely find a community of people that
will support you through it. Is there anything a friend or a loved one can do to help someone they see going through psoriasis?
My mom showed up for me and she did it. If it's just a conversation for me to vent,
you know, my parents, relatives, cousins, siblings, like they were just there to listen. My mom and my dad, they were both very supportive
to the point that they would actually help me take my biologics when I didn't want to do it myself. And the way they supported me was by listening to me.
And Christopher, your wife is the one who got you to get the right treatment. So she gets flowers later, today, I think.
Yeah, she definitely deserves it, yeah. But I've always had a lot of support, lots of good friends, real friends.
The last question is how is wrong because of your psoriasis? So before, I was very vain about the way I looked,
really relied on my looks. And having psoriasis allowed me to not only become humble, but more compassionate with other people
as well. That's beautiful, very, very inspirational. I've learned to be more gentle with myself
and just kind of calm down a little bit and know that it will be OK. I love it. Well, I'm going to go home and hug my family.
You guys have really inspired me. [LIVELY MUSIC]
