The Tilburg rapper and producer AG Blaxx had serious skin problems after he had stopped lubricating hormone ointment. He suffered from Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW), a severe response to stopping the treatments. Saskia Verme from Den Bosch recognizes himself in the story of the rapper. She too had eczema for years and used a lot of ointment. When she stopped abruptly, she suffered from bright red skin and a lot of pain, just like the rapper now. Yet she managed to get rid of all the complaints and she grants him that too.
After reading the story of the Tilburg rapper AG Blaxx, Saskia Vee (58) contacted Omroep Brabant. “I think it’s so brave that he tells his story in public,” she says. But at the same time she wants to let him know that there is help in the Netherlands. “There are so many good new medicines nowadays. Try it in Utrecht before you go to Thailand and spend a lot of money on treatment.”
Saskia was sixteen when she first suffered from eczema. She got hormone ointment, a widely used remedy for the skin condition. “I was bothered so much that I was going to smear a lot. With the knowledge I have nowadays, I think I used way too much hormone ointment. But I didn’t know that at the time,” she says.
The cream helped and the pain became less, but her eczema was never completely gone. “Because of the ointment, my skin became so thin that I could no longer leave the street. If the sun was shining, I had to wear a hat and t-shirts with long sleeves.”
Saskia is in the early twenties if she decides to stop the ointment acutely. She was done with it, but just then she got more violent complaints. Her skin became fire red: “It seemed as if my skin was on explosion. My skin was very red and pus ran out. I was also in so much pain.”
Those complaints were not only because of her eczema, but also because she had stopped the ointment. Something that is nowadays increasingly recognized as Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW), the suspected condition that AG Blaxx is struggling with.
There were years of searching. Saskia tried everything to get rid of the complaints she got through the ointment and get rid of her eczema. “From homeopathy, orthomolecular therapy, strict diets to taking ice baths. I did everything to keep my resistance as high as possible. Because if my resistance was bad, I got more trouble,” she says. The impact is so great that she would rather not share photos of herself of that time to this day.
“There was no solution for my eczema.”
She didn’t want to go to the dermatologist anymore, because she didn’t feel seriously taken by that. “There was no solution for my eczema. I did not feel like I was struggling so much and I had such a pain in my face that I thought: I don’t want this anymore.”
Five years ago she heard that there was new medication for her skin condition. The positive messages gave her hope. “I then made an appointment at the National Expertise Center for Eczema in Utrecht, because I no longer dared to a regional hospital. I wanted to go to the ‘real’ experts.”
In Utrecht she had to start from before: again hormone ointment, but other species and with new schemes. The ointment helped, but she got a different skin condition and she was not allowed to smear a hormone ointment. Yet she eventually found a treatment that worked with the help of a dermatologist. She got new creams, reducing the symptoms and her red skin disappeared.
“I asked myself for years: what do I look like today?”
Since then, Saskia no longer has to follow a strict diet, no more ice baths and she has no pain anymore. “I am surprised every day about my own head. I have asked myself for years: what do I look like today? Now I can look at my face and think: my skin looks so good.”
Saskia hopes that Anneudy Gonzalez (AG Blaxx) will not, just like she, spends money for years on treatments that only work for a while. “I got hope every time, that made the disappointment all the greater. Call me, then I will tell you how I did it,” she says.
