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Whydoibother (Spruce Creek, Pa) on 08/24/2012
5 out of 5 stars

I have been reading everyone's posts for 8 months and I swear I have tried EVERYTHING listed here-ACV, yogurt, probiotics, manuka honey, aloe, alcohol & peroxide, cutting out all sls, flouride, cinammon, spicy foods, pristine oral health, oregano oil, coconut oil.... NOTHING worked. Some things soothed it, but nothing made it go away. My dermatologist told me I had PD and of course gave me steriods and antibiotics- I read not to use steriods because they ultimately make it worse and the antibiotic cream did nothing- oral antibiotics gave me a whole body rash. For 8 long frustrating months I battled this "dermatitis" around my mouth and nostrils. It even traveled to my eyelid at one point. It finally just dawned on me that maybe it wasn't dermatitis at all, and that's why none of the remedies were working. I swear I don't know why I even bother going to the doctor anymore. I realized he hadn't even tested the rash in the first place, just was sure it was PD. If he had simply done a test to find out what was present on the skin, I wouldn't have struggled through 8 months of my life!!! I was reading something about athletes foot and it sounded much like the scales on my face- so I thought perhaps it was fungal. I applied Lotrimin Ultra and a perscription anti-fungal-ketoconazole cream 2% - that I had leftover from something else. I applied both to the affected area before bed, and by morning there was a marked improvement!!! I was thrilled. I applied am and pm for a week and it is TOTALLY GONE!!!!! TOTALLY GONE. So if nothing is working for you, perhaps it's not dermatitis at all. It is a FUNGUS growing in your skin- just like athlete's foot.
REPLY   4      

Replied By Carmen (Chicago, Il) on 12/24/2012

Thank you for posting this! I thought I had correctly self-diagnosed myself with perioral dermatitis, as my story was very similar to everyone else on these boards (whole life of perfect skin, then recurring outbreaks around the mouth to create a 'muzzle' effect with increasing frequency) and it became so bad at one point that the moisturizer and makeup I put on top of the rash became a staph infection. So I had to take antibiotics for the infection, then I had a severe alllergic reaction which caused my face to swell up to alarming proportions. So then I was put on a 6 day steroid pack, which worked wonders for both the rash and the swelling, but a few days after I finished the pack, my face rash symptoms came back. On the verge of despair, I saw this post and decided to try some clotrimazole on the affected areas. While the effect wasn't amazingly immediate, the areas did feel less itchy and irritated than they had before, so I continued putting the cream on several times throughout the day. Now, 2 1/2 days later, the rash is about 85 percent better and I'm hoping that by tomorrow I will be fully (or almost) better again. So I encourage you to try the antifungal cream, especially if, like me, your symptoms were less papule-oriented and more dry/flaky/red.

Thanks again!

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