- #SMALL TINY PINPOINT RED DOTS ON SKIN DONT ITCH SKIN#
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- #SMALL TINY PINPOINT RED DOTS ON SKIN DONT ITCH SOFTWARE#
#SMALL TINY PINPOINT RED DOTS ON SKIN DONT ITCH SKIN#
“I’d go in and say, ‘Listen, the things you’re doing are just suppressing it - we’ve got to try something’ ” to get rid of it.īut what? Another skin biopsy - the fourth - again indicated psoriasis. Williams recalls feeling increasingly frustrated. Once again, the effect of the drugs was only temporary.īy January 2010, Williams was no better and Poligone prescribed azathioprine, a powerful and sometimes toxic drug that suppresses the immune system and is given to transplant patients. Williams was having a bad flare on that initial visit, and Poligone prescribed a steroid shot as well as an antibiotic, because some of his lesions looked infected. Over the years doctors considered and ruled out eczema, an unusual presentation of a cat allergy and stress. Doctors did not even know whether Williams’s rash was a reaction to something internal or environmental. “More than anything, the patient’s in front of you and you’re trying to scramble to find appropriate treatment.” A rash and itching can have myriad causes, ranging from the prosaic (poison ivy) to the potentially fatal (lymphoma). “I thought, ‘What am I missing?’ ” Poligone recalled. “It’s very uncommon” for a patient to see so many doctors without a more definitive answer, said Poligone. Williams underwent several skin biopsies all seemed to point to psoriasis.Īs he scanned his new patient’s hefty chart, Poligone saw that none of the eight dermatologists who preceded him had been able to pinpoint the underlying cause of the rash. But none of the medications - steroids, antibiotics and even big guns such as methotrexate, which is used to treat cancer, and Cellcept, a drug to prevent rejection in transplant patients - eliminated the rash. Treatments with ultraviolet light, a mainstay therapy for a variety of skin ailments including psoriasis, helped because they made his skin less sensitive and painful. “It was brutal,” he said, although “most people didn’t really know what was going on unless it was on my face.” During such times, Williams said, he also tried not to schedule business meetings or travel, which was especially difficult when he was in negotiations to sell his company. “I had to use a warm washcloth to open my eyes” in the morning, he recalled, and shaving was impossible. “I tried not to sweat,” he recalled, and increasingly avoided even golf and yard work.Īt its worst, the oozing pustules blanketed much of his face, sometimes causing his eyes to swell nearly shut. Williams said that the rash would leave dense clusters of small, painful blisters on his back, underarms and groin - any place he sweated. In January 2006 he began seeing a new dermatologist at the University of Rochester School of Medicine for “recalcitrant dermatitis.” “He worked on it for probably a year trying different things” that didn’t help, Williams said. But five months later, when various medicines had failed to eradicate the rash, he consulted a second dermatologist. “This should take care of it,” he remembers the doctor telling him. Williams, 54, said he felt reassured when the first skin doctor gave him a topical cream. and will be one of those cases that I bring up in my career,” said Poligone, 39. The case also left an indelible impression on Brian Poligone, a University of Rochester dermatologist and the ninth specialist Williams consulted, who finally figured out what was wrong.
Subsequent treatment not only swiftly cleared up his skin, it also saved his life. In the end, its unlikely cause turned out to be far more terrifying than Williams ever imagined.
Nearly two dozen specialists were unable to figure out why the rash, which periodically spread to his face, would sometimes get better but never entirely disappear. Doctors later decided his problem was psoriasis, which causes scaly skin and intense itching and can appear suddenly.Ĭontending with his inflamed and often painful skin condition, along with numerous futile efforts to treat it, would consume the next six years of Williams’s life.
The doctor initially told him he had contact dermatitis, a common skin condition triggered by a variety of irritants. “I figured it would just clear up,” recalls Williams, who lives in a suburb of Rochester, N.Y.īut when the rash on his arms, legs and back persisted, Williams, who had not had skin problems previously, consulted a dermatologist.
#SMALL TINY PINPOINT RED DOTS ON SKIN DONT ITCH PATCH#
Williams suspected he’d wandered too close to a patch of poison ivy or touched something that had triggered an allergic reaction.
#SMALL TINY PINPOINT RED DOTS ON SKIN DONT ITCH SOFTWARE#
No big deal, software consultant Ed Williams thought, when he developed an itchy red rash after playing in a golf tournament in the summer of 2004.