From Severe Eczema and Oozing Wounds to Clear Skin and Gymnastics

Just knowing that we've seen, like, this much improvement, this drastic improvement, and that I know we'll get to the point where she doesn't have flares at all. I am Nicole Thompson. I live in Gig Harbor, Washington, and I am a clinical lab scientist. Our day-to-day was a bit chaotic and hectic dealing with a child that was chronically ill. She was constantly itching, constantly had issues. She had eosinophilic esophagitis, which causes GI discomfort, and her skin was terrible. It was red. She was itchy all the time. She had oozing wounds, like, specifically across her neck. She had a lot of anxiety around those things, and so the day-to-day was just trying to figure out how to manage all her itchiness. And her eczema was from her neck down, like everywhere. I put her in summer camp. It's nice and it's warm, and she was wearing sweatpants and sweatsuits every day to cover up her skin. It was very sad, very emotionally draining, and I was desperate. Her GI doctor recognized that her eosinophilic esophagitis, you know, was doing damage to her esophagus, and so they really pushed for her to get the biologic medication, DUPIXENT. It's an injection, and a lot of people find great success for that. So I was really hoping that was gonna be our big break, but it turned out that the injections were very painful. Those caused a lot of anxiety, and she went in to her GI doctor and had another endoscopy, and there was no improvement. And so we stopped those injections, and I just was at my breaking point because I was counting on that to really improve her life. She was upset every day. She was losing sleep. She'd lost a lot of hair. I just had to do something to help her. And so I saw Dr. Temple and her Eczema Lady profile on Instagram, and that got me interested. And so then I saw one of Dr. Temple's videos, and I thought, "Okay. She seems like she's dialed into this gut health thing." And then I got her book and read her book, and that stuff all made sense to me. I reached out to them and was like, "I need help." [laughs] Just knowing that she was willing to go at it from not like a, you know, throwing medications at it. She was really into the gut healing. And seeing some other success stories through IHC, I thought, "What do I have to lose?" And I knew there was gonna be a cost attached to it, but I just thought, "You know, these people seem compassionate, and they'll help me figure out a way to make this happen." And after my first meeting with them, I mean, they did make it reasonable and achievable for me to sign up for that program, and that gave me a lot of faith. It's just you get to that point where you're so hopeless and helpless, and just knowing that Dr. Temple, you know, is a pediatrician, so she knows. She sees kids day to day, so that really gave me faith, too. Some of the first steps of the program is eliminating dairy and wheat, then just introducing the supplements, like, in a stepwise fashion and eliminating the added sugars. I think that was the big thing. But I will say it was probably at the six-month point, I started to see that she had eczema in fewer places. It wasn't-- and it wasn't quite as severe as it had been. She was still, you know, flaring, but it was, like, definitely, like, the severity had decreased. I just thought, "We gotta keep at it," because Dr. Temple's program, she also s- you know, said that it's not a linear process, that it's gonna be up and down. And so knowing that ahead of time, knowing that the things that I was seeing, that's, was expected, and that was how the trajectory of the program was gonna go. So we just stuck with it. After a year, you know, continued to improve. She didn't have any more oozing wounds. It was all real manageable. And the other thing that helped, too, is the dealing with the anxiety component and the wellness coaches. They use SCORAD to score the eczema, and when Claudia started, she was at an 87. I think it's on a scale of 100. She was, like, the red zone, and now she's down into the teens, and it affects her life minimally. Like, she gets a little itchy now and then or when she gets stressed, but she wears shorts now. She wears short sleeves and, you know, it's just you can see that she continues to heal. This is all part of the process, and you just have to stick with it. Since working with IHC, Claudia's life has changed dramatically. She went from being completely covered, even in 90-degree weather, trying not to itch. Now she's in gymnastics and wears leotards. She's not self-conscious about anything. Her skin is clear. She's able to interact with her friends. It alm- it's, like, making me tear up just thinking about how far she's come. And I always tell her, "We got here because we worked hard, and we stuck with the program." It's worth every penny.