And although it sounds ridiculous, if you’re having a bath every day your water bill goes through the roof [laughs] because I was having to bath every day. Again it wasn’t, it was just for symptom relief like. And then they didn’t, they didn’t give me anything for a shower. I only had Oilatum for a long time. So I ended up having to bath just to, to kind of keep clean, cos I couldn’t use regular soaps, cos it irritated me. So I ended up going back to the GP again and asking for like something like a shower gel. So then I didn’t have to have a bath every day, but I could only really maybe skip one bath because the bath, you know, you soak in it and it did do, it was better.

You kind of get used to, I’ve had it for eight years, I’m used to like the shower gel and all the bits and pieces, the moisturiser like unfortunately, you just have to like get used to the fact that the shower gel smells of nothing and is greasy [laughs] and you’re kinda like used to it. And occasionally, I kinda like treat myself by having like, using normal shower gel and then quickly doing it with the other shower gel again to kinda like balance it up. If I go away, I tend to kinda, volunteering for youth group, you kinda like tend to not wanna use your manky shower gel in front of like, cos it kinda like goes under, y’know, like gets on the floor and someone’s like, Oh, that’s oily, like, Whose got oil in the shower with you? So I kind of like tend to like do a naughty week and use like normal shower gel. And kind of moisturise double if I can, kind of like balance it out, which probably doesn’t do anything, but it kinda like keeps me happy mentally. The stuff’s horrible.

Like I say, you know, and you get out the bath in the Oilatum and you dry off but you’d feel greasy. Then you’d have to put creams on, on top of that. You never felt you’d, I almost, it’s not that I didn’t feel clean but you didn’t feel refreshed, because you still felt covered in like something, like I say, all the creams and things you felt covered in them rather than. So, and if you, you know, if you had to put liberal amounts on you were, you kind of had to.

I think the main thing was like you had to wash the bath out every time you used it. Which, and, you know, you know, you rinse it out after you use it every time, but I had to like properly like wash it and rub it, because otherwise the next person would just fall like slip, cos there was that much like oil in the bottom and you see you had to be like really careful to make sure that you properly cleaned it out otherwise somebody was gonna slip and fall and hurt themselves.

So like coal tar is like the main ingredient in like the shampoos. There’s T-Gel, which doesn’t smell terrible. And then there’s the one that you tend to get prescribed to you. I don’t know. It’s in a brown bottle, in a brown tub. That smells horrendous. I don’t use that one, purely because I’d rather, it would cost me the same price to get a bottle of T-Gel by myself than it would to pay for a prescription. So I use T-Gel. I don’t particularly worry about the smell. I mean in terms of, I shower in the mornings and then I put it in. And you can use T-Gel like a normal shampoo. You can put it in, just like rub it in for like two minutes and then wash it all out. So I tend to, when I put it on, I tend to do it, it’s the first thing I do when I have a shower, I put it in. And I do everything else like I brush my teeth and then I do-. And then I leave it in, so it’s probably in my hair for about 15 minutes. And then I wash it out.

And I don’t think it has a very strong smell. I know that if someone just came up to smelled my hair though after using it, they would smell the coal tar and something like that. But it’s not like the other one where it’s like, takes over the room or something like that. And, but then usually after I’ve showered then I get ready for the day, and then before I leave I put some product in my hair anyway. So I know that would mask it. So it’s not something I particularly worry about, purely because I have a routine. I probably, even if I went out with it afterwards, and I think T-Gel’s very good, so I wouldn’t be worried unless someone come up and like put their head in my hair, [laughs] or something like that. So, which never happens.

So I’ve had Cocois on my head which was smelly. The shampoo, Capasal it’s a tar shampoo, tar based shampoo that is a bit smelly as well but it’s not as bad but still it can be, people could say, Oh, what’s that smell? and for someone with psoriasis and you being noticed that you’ve got something wrong with you, it really does dent your confidence. And if someone asks, you don’t wanna say, Ah, it’s me sorry, and you don’t wanna explain the whole story, so. When I first had psoriasis I kept myself to myself a little bit and so obviously you don’t want people asking questions.

But stuff like they gave me certain treatments for my hair like Cocois which is a smelly substance and I just said to them, Look, if I’m going to school in the morning I’m not gonna want my hair stinking of something, and I just stopped using it off my own back cos I don’t want to be at school and have people going, Oh, what’s that smell? and me having to explain. So I just stopped using that which probably if I did use it would have helped me but it’s just one of those things that I don’t think doctors realise that you have to be practical, the medicines have to help and they have to be practical with what you do in your everyday life.

When I have a shower I use Capasal. The doctor mentions, and when I’ve had it that you have it pretty much twice every shower session so you put it on and you rinse it off and about 10 minutes later or five minutes you put it back on and you rinse it off again and that’s fine. And when you get out and you first of all you use Sebco and you use that for you put that on and you can leave it on your scalp for about an hour, two hours at the most, and then you wash that off and then you move on to Betnovate.