I wake up and it’s a million times worse than yesterday. The oozing has dried and its crusting but the worst is the insane ITCHING. I rub my fingers together to try to get it to stop itching and small bits of skin flake off. I hate it. I can’t concentrate on anything else. I’m miserable. I can’t bend my fingers. The oozing on my fingers might be the worse it’s ever been in my life, and I keep trying to wipe it dry with a paper towel.
Does it mean the TCM concoction isn’t working this time? I remember last time it cleared up REALLY fast. Maybe she didn’t make it cooling enough this time (which she said she wouldn’t because my period is coming and warned me to watch out for strong menstrual pains with this protocol). I think back to the flare up I had in July and how I managed to calm it down myself – adzuki and hyacinth bean soup for a week including eating the beans, which is supposed to help spleen qi deficiency, get it moving again and expel all this supposed dampness in my body (supposed because I’m still not sure I believe in TCM sometimes, the more I look into textbooks and dig deeper it reads like a bunch of moolah but at the same time I respond well to the remedies). I look at my fingers – one commonality I see from last time is the swelling of my fingers. Last time my fingers were so swollen with fluid retention (? maybe? who knows what it was) that I couldn’t take my rings off and had to keep them on for a week. I resolved it last time with the soup and dietary herbs, I can try it again, there’s no harm. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up, even before brushing my teeth.
Adzuki Hyacinth Soup recipe used today (every time is a bit different depending on season, how my body feels and also whatever is in my fridge)
- Adzuki beans (40g) – to dispel dampness
- Hyacinth beans (35g) – to nurture the qi in spleen
- Job’s Tears / Chinese Pearl Barley (40g) – to dispel dampness and nourish qi in spleen
- Dried Yam Rhizome slices, the thick kind (40g) – nourish qi in the spleen
- Corn including the corn silk, chopped into chunks only because I like it that way and it’s easier to eat – for sweetness flavour and cools heat, dispels dampness, nourishes spleen
- Carrot chopped into fork-spearable sized chunks – adds sweet flavour and nourishes spleen, clears heat
- Two slices of ginger to warm up the soup just in case the carrot and corn are too cooling
- Pork shin (250g but only because that’s the packaging size)
Stomach felt tender this morning, definitely like a food poisoning / gastroenteritis but no diarrhea or vomiting. I’m still guessing it was the soup. No more eating old leftovers again! Soup is on the boil and I slowly start brushing. I stand in front of the sink like an idiot, not be able to focus on anything except the scratching.
For lunch, I only have the brown rice and the soup, making sure to eat all the beans this time (I normally don’t), and the yams and veggies too. After lunch, another round of chinese medicine taken orally, then I soak my hands in the medicinal rinse for 30 mins. It makes my fingers yellow which I hate but dries out much of the skin. There is still weeping but it’s softening. Bowel movement after lunch / medicine (not sure which) and it’s damp, but a decent amount considering my last bowel movement was a small amount yesterday and then four days before that. Keep it coming!
My mood is sour after lunch, I’m sad about the state of my skin and what an invalid I am right now without being able ot use my hands. I debate whether to take a nap as I’m getting tired by this point but think of the insomnia and it’s probably a better idea to stick it out til about 9pm and go to bed then. The only thing is that I like the quiet of the night, it makes me want to focus and do many things, researching skin, planning out next career moves, future stuff, thinking about how to beautify the apartment some more etc and so find it hard to put away my phone, rest my mind and commit to sleeping at 10pm. I decide to massage all the dampness-dispelling acupressure points while watching TV. Pressing using my thumb is quite exhausting; I ponder buying an acupressure tool but I don’t want to waste money and suddenly remember I have a large-sized body gua sha that can do the trick.
I go for zushanli to dispel dampness and also work on my stomach which still feels uncomfortable and rock hard, aiming for 5 minutes or as long as I can go for until I’m tired / my leg is tired. I then go for I watched a couple of episodes Then on to fenglong, which was super hard to find and I’m not even sure I found it correctly. More research and attempts tomorrow. Again I kind of just go by finding wherever hurts, which I assume means blockage. As you press all around it’s quite obvious how there’s a specific spot that seems more sore than everywhere else. Then went for sanyinjiao and chengshan. Chengshan was also really hard to find and not sure I got it right to be honest. All acupressure points to expel dampness and nourish the spleen taken reference from this book written by a TCM practitioner about dampness. I watched quite a few episodes so I think I must have gone at this for a least an hour or two.
By evening, my fingers seemed to have improved by 5%, honestly only noticeable by yours truly but it feels a million times better without the itching, weeping and the feeling of an open wound.
Next steps: look into the type of magnesium supplement to take and hope it gets miles better tomorrow.
five hundred home 