Irritated Skin and Rash - 7 Months

Hi,

I had a bad reaction to a product that I applied around the eyebrow area. I feel it is more irritant contact dermatitis because of the ingredients probably being too strong and I didn't have any itching and never had any known allergies or skin issues like this before - only some dry skin on my hands due to strong handwash,

The product itself didn't cause problems for weeks although I admit there were some times I felt the slightest of tingles.

I bought another tube of the product and it felt more of the substance was more flowing on the brush. I didn't use it for 5 days when I used my regular facial wash and I had a weird tingling sensation that I didn't have before with the facial wash.

A couple of days later I reused the product and my skin became very red and swollen around the arch. I didn't experience any blistering, bleeding or badly cracked skin etc.

What I did have as a mixture of dark red skin (where skin appeared raw) and brighter red skin and no pain at all and no itching so I thought it was just a bad reaction and nothing more and that it would clear up in weeks.

However, this didn't go away after two weeks when I decided to see a doctor. Over the course of 2 months after seeing very slow progress which was a reduction in the redness although very minimal, I was prescribed oral and cream steroids.

Cream used about 4-5 weeks over 6 months, and oral steroids around 3 months on/off.

Anyway, months of the skin very slowly fading at the same rate - so areas of dark red became lighter red and red became pink but crucially the textures appeared the same.

Eventually I saw a dermatologist and he said the cream most likely caused steroid induced erythema despite me using it for a few days here and there over the initial 3 months.

He was confident that the skin would heal back to normal and advised me to apply glycerin+ water twice daily and aveeno cream and elidel (non-steroid cream) for a  month.

He said he saw far worse and I agree that my skin isn't too bad to what I've seen on the internet but because it was very red at first I feel that this would have increased the time to heal however I didn't expect a min. of 7 months and  counting.

Close-up it just looks like the outer layer is missing so it's not deep skin issue although a couple of areas do appear deeper than others hence why it's brighter pink compared to other areas of normal pink to light pink. Looks like scales close up, yet the skin isn't dry so that's the best way to describe and just looks like  some spots of skin are missing the thin outer layer of normal skin.

Although the skin gets lighter and lighter, I've yet to see the lightest colour of affected area going back to normal which is why I'm still concerned. Only if that happens would I then feel confident that the worse affected areas would then eventually heal to normal.

I guess what I'm looking for is advice and reassurance that despite the number of months, skin does eventually heal back to normal.

Thanks

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