From Eczema to Recovery: Megan's Story

Who says miracles don't happen? Our special guest, Megan, is here to share a miraculous story of hope. Her daughter, plagued with eczema from a young age, was given a new lease on life through the power of homeopathy. Megan's compelling account offers heartening support to parents battling this skin affliction in their children. She highlights the significance of tackling eczema at the cellular level rather than settling for temporary relief. Her story will leave you inspired, optimistic, and eager to explore alternative, holistic approaches to health.

Pushing past the conventional, we delve into the world of natural remedies for eczema healing. Megan shares her success story of homeopathics that not only alleviated her daughter's eczema but also led to long-term recovery. The chat underscores the strong link between internal health and skin issues, emphasizing a clean diet's crucial role in the process. For parents grappling with the decision to use quick fixes like steroids, Megan's journey offers a potent reminder of the potential long-term dangers and the importance of getting to the root of the problem.

Ever wondered about the power of perseverance in alternative methods? Well, our discussion with Megan is a testament to just that. She emphasizes the importance of sticking with homeopathic remedies, even when the road seems tough. The concluding part of our conversation touches on the challenges faced when dealing with eczema in older individuals but leaves listeners with a lot of encouragement and hope for the long-term. We also touch upon the role of alternative methods for mothers, emphasizing the importance of spreading awareness about such methods. So, tune in, be inspired and join us on this fascinating journey.

FIND ME!

Chapters

• 0:00 Homeopathy for Eczema in Children
• 18:54 Eczema Healing With Natural Remedies
• 27:57 Perseverance in Eczema Homeopathy Remedies
• 37:54 Alternative Healing for Moms - Spread

Transcript

Bri Hurlburt  0:00  

Welcome back to Homeopathy at Home with Melissa. Hey, Melissa. 

Melissa Crenshaw 0:04

Hey Bri.  It’s great to see you. 

Bri Hurlburt 0:06

So good to be here. Tonight we have a special guest with us again. I love that we've started to get some testimonies and people willing to come be on the podcast with us. Tonight we're gonna have Megan with us. Hey, Megan, if you want to say hi real quick.

Megan  0:22  

Hey Bri. Hey Melissa.

Bri Hurlburt  0:25  

She’s going to join us to talk about her daughter's eczema story.

Melissa Crenshaw  0:30  

Yeah, thank you. I'm glad you're here, Megan.  Thank you so much for agreeing to be here with us and tell your daughter's story because it's encouraging. There are so many parents out there right now who are so discouraged with their baby’s eczema, their toddler, their younger child, their older child. It doesn't matter how old you are, homeopathy can uproot eczema, but we do see it happen faster and easier the younger they are. 

That's not even just with eczema.  That's with all kinds of conditions. The younger the person is when they start homeopathy, the faster and easier it is to uproot the thing. I'm really happy to just see the progress that you've made. I would love for you just to tell our listeners your story. 

Before we do that, if you're listening to this on the podcast, we are going to show some pictures. You can head on over to the YouTube channel and actually see the pictures of her progress that we’ll show in just a little bit. 

So Megan, tell us your story.

Megan  1:41  

Yeah, sure.  Thank you for having me. I have a two and a half year old daughter. Her eczema really started when she was around three months old.  She had this full body flare that we as new parents just didn't know what it was. It didn't itch at the time but she was also so little. We took her to the pediatrician. We just felt in our hearts that we did not want to take the steroid route. It sort of fizzled out as she got a little older, but it always kind of stuck around in these small little areas: behind her knees, on the tops of her thigh.  It kind of localized a little more versus being so inflamed all over. 

Diet changes for breastfeeding helped with some of the overall redness. I just remember when she was starting daycare for the first time at one, it was in the summer. It was late May and I would not put her in shorts. I never sent her in shorts to daycare or preschool because I just didn't want anyone to see the backs of her legs. Even at one, it was still kind of putting a big damper on our lives. Putting her in a bathing suit just gave me anxiety for swim day at preschool, just because it was still visible. 

As she started to get a little older, she started to start scratching, like most kids with eczema do.  They start to find it. It starts to bother them a little bit more.  Exacerbates it. We still felt like we were just slapping topical things on it. It was still in those little areas. 

And then in June of this year we went to a family vacation at the beach and kind of a perfect storm happened inside of her. There were multiple bug bites.  She got bit by sand fleas, she was swimming in a highly chlorinated pool, and she was eating foods that we later realized had a couple of her food sensitivities in it. Kind of just this overall inflammatory situation happened while we were on vacation and it just set her body off. 

She had full flares all over her body now, from her neck all the way down to the backs of her knees.  It was just getting worse and worse every single day no matter what we were doing. We were so restrictive with her eating. It just felt like her body was spinning out of control inflammatory wise and we just couldn't get a handle on it. In the middle of summer, when she should be outside swimming and playing and wearing little to nothing, we had her covered inside. We stopped going places or doing things. We were just overcome by how severe this flare was and that it just was not being managed. 

Now as she's two, she was just violently itching and she would communicate with us that it was itchy. She started itching all night long. We were losing sleep like so many parents do. I think that's the most devastating piece of eczema is how much your child is itching. They'll go hide and itch. Lose sleep.  It causes behavioral issues from the lack of sleep.  It just started spinning out of control. 

About a month of this went on and we were just not seeing any improvement despite a very low tox household. We don't have mold. The diet was really clean. We just felt like there was just this missing piece that we needed to calm her body down, and just get to the root, like heal from a cellular level. 

I was very familiar with homeopathy so I reached out to some friends and was referred to you guys. I just felt like this was something that I could not handle on my own. I needed constitutional care. This was something that was very deep rooted, very complex. I needed guidance. And I knew this was not going to be an overnight thing, so just having someone that was going to help us through this journey. I had just a deep faith that this was it. This was what was going to help her live a normal life. 

And so we got started.  I reached out to Bri at the end of June and then by the beginning of July we had had a meeting and we got started on a care plan together. I think my favorite part of all of this was the initial consult with Bri, where she just spent an hour asking me questions and going through everything from conception to where we were now. It just helped me kind of piece together so many things of possible contributors. But then at the end of the day, it just gave me some ease that we may never really know what one thing disrupted her gut or caused her to be susceptible to eczema, but the beautiful thing about homeopathy was that we didn't really have to know exactly what it was but that we were still able to heal her at the same time. 

I think that was the hardest part. You could just drive yourself mad throwing away everything in your home. What if it's this? What if it's that? I think that there definitely are a lot of triggers that could potentially be contributing factors, but homeopathy got Rachel, in our experience, to a place where her entire system was manageable and calm enough that we could actually start to see what some of those triggers were. 

She was super clear, like she rubbed up against the Christmas tree and that kind of … She doesn't like that fabric.  It kind of irritates her skin, but then immediately, within a day, it would calm back down again because her body was just healing at such a rapid rate we felt like at this point. 

I know I kind of talked in a circle but that was one of my favorite parts was having the one hour consult and just really being able to talk about the whole child. I just really appreciated that part of the entire care plan.

Melissa Crenshaw  8:54  

Thank you so much. What a great story. You're saying at the end of July you started the care plan. For those that listen to this in the future, this is now the beginning of December, so we're talking August, September, October, November, four months and maybe a week or two, which is amazing and wonderful. 

And you know what I heard in your story? I heard what I hear so, so often and that's what I was saying a few minutes ago. There are so many moms out there that are breastfeeding and their babies get eczema.  Usually the lactation consultant, which I am also so nobody's being thrown under the bus here. I've done it many times. Pediatrician, lactation consultant, naturopathic doctor, whoever.  Any person that you go to see they're going to say, “Oh, cut out gluten and dairy.” Some might say corn.  Some might say eggs. They're going to have you cut out these foods. What I often see is that it either doesn't help, or it does help but then they're stuck. It's an extremely stressful way to live when you can't eat dairy, gluten, eggs, then everything. You have to change your diet, the way you shop, the way you cook.  Eating out and going to friends’ houses or parties, all of that is stressful. And then family members don't understand. Extended family.  They just don't understand. They're just like, “Oh, well, it's just a little bit,” and they have no idea that if you get a little bit that night's going to be, and not even just that night, it could take weeks of just no sleep. 

I heard you say it was sleep disruptive. It caused anxiety. There was a lot of cover up. So there was cover up of clothes, and trying to cover with medicines.  Food sensitivities that you figured out.  Restrictive diet.  Stress, stress, stress.  Your whole life stopped. Like you said, this summer you just stopped going anywhere. You guys felt overcome.  The violent itching.  The behavior issues.  We often see that follow. And yes, in her case, most likely because of the missed sleep, but what we also see is when people don't uproot the eczema early, then when they get to be 8, 10, 12, teenagers, there's this whole behavior thing. It's just part of the whole picture if we don't get this taken care of. 

And then you did all the things. You did all the things and I know how expensive that was. 

Megan 11:59

Yeah, lots.

Melissa Crenshaw 12:01

You probably had the house checked for mold, or maybe even did some mold remediation. I don't know, but a lot of people do that. Air filters.  Changing the diet.  Changing all of your laundry detergents and soaps. Those are good things to do but when you're in a panic mode and you have to do it all at the same time. That's expensive. 

Megan 12:24

Oh my gosh, yes. 

Melissa Crenshaw 12:25

When people are just wanting to step into a natural health care lifestyle and they're new to it, I'm like, “Let's just change one thing at a time. Okay, let's change your laundry detergent.” Well, in your case, you were like, “We have to do all of these things.” So we're just throwing everything away. And then we're buying all these new things. And it's expensive. You had to do research.  That costs time.  You weren't getting any sleep. All these things that you said, we hear this terrible situation all the time. And you needed help. And I'm so glad that you reached out to us. 

I want to show some pictures if that's okay with you.  You're giving me permission to show some pictures. Let me pull up the one I want to start with first. First I'm going to show you … so you guys that are listening to the podcast, you want to scoot on over to the YouTube channel so you can see these pictures. 

First, this is the back of one leg. The backs of both legs looked like this. I saw the whole picture. And it looks like you can see a little bit of her arm up there. 

Megan 13:40

Yes. 

Melissa Crenshaw 13:42

Was this the worst of it? Is there another picture I have that’s worse than this?

Megan  13:46  

I would say that was one of the worst days. That was probably the day that I sat down and just started reaching out.  I need a homeopath. I need to find a healing modality. I think that was one of the worst days and it was one of the most widespread areas. We cropped her face out but you could just see in the picture. She was just crying and just very uncomfortable. So yeah, that's probably one of the worst. 

This photo, the inflammation behind her legs was so significant and she was scratching so consistently that the skin started to break down and break open and bleed through her pants. She would just scratch until she bled. That was just one area that was just so difficult to heal. That was something that … I was already working with Bri at this time and we had spoken about some of those just very hard to heal areas.  We were able to switch some of the remedies around, and doses, and we were able to heal that area that just felt like it was impossible and just never healing. Within a couple of weeks, I would say about a month, that whole area behind her leg healed, which was such a problem area for us. 

And then this photo: she flared under her arms, from about midway from her elbow to her armpit, and it was just red, hot, swollen, itchy. It had flared around her belly. At this point, we just felt like there was minimal parts of her body that weren't flared, where she just was itching, and her skin was red and bumpy and patchy and dry and all the things.  This was just one of the most widespread days and this was probably like the beginning of July.

Melissa Crenshaw  16:00  

Okay. Okay.

And look at her leg.

Megan 16:04  

Yes, yeah. And this was actually a couple of weeks ago. Right before Thanksgiving Bri and I met, just to discuss if we were going to continue, if we needed to make any changes, and the skin is just like porcelain now. I wish I could get it even more clear. When she's just laying down and I see the backs of her legs, like I'll just rub my hands over it. And I'm like I never imagined she would just have that soft, supple, porcelain skin. And just her knees, I just can't say it enough. That was such a difficult area to heal and that's where my eyes go. When I see any child running around in shorts, I want to see their knees and I guess I just stared at hers for so long. I was always comparing her to other kids. So we just praise her legs every time we get to see them.

Melissa Crenshaw 17:10  

Look at her belly and her arms. 

Megan 17:14

She was so excited. And we tell her, “We have to take pictures of your skin,” and she puts her arms up and she's very excited, too.  She says, “No itchy. No itch.” So she knows. It's not red anymore.  It doesn't itch anymore. It's all just so smooth. If you saw her, you would never know that she was an eczema kid when before people would ask us what was wrong with her.  Or, “Oh, poor baby.”  People would definitely notice. You would never know that she once was just covered from head to toe.

Melissa Crenshaw  17:51  

You didn't have to deal with it for too long, but in that short amount of time, did you have any extended family saying, “Why aren't you doing this or that?” Or “What are you doing?”

Megan 18:04  

Absolutely, yes. Especially with the commercials that come on TV promoting all of these different kinds of quick fixes for eczema, especially geared towards the pediatric population. A lot of, “Why don't you just do a steroid? I can get a steroid from a friend and you can try it. An antibiotic would probably help.” Just like lots of different things. I just knew, even from a young age.  I had a bottle of steroid cream in my hand when she was an infant and I just could not bring myself to do it. I just had this voice that this is not going to be a solution. There's too many side effects for me. I'm just not comfortable. I want to try something else. And so we threw it away. We just knew, especially reading stories about Topical Steroid Withdrawal.  Trying to do as much as we could research wise.  We joined lots of different groups, especially ones that promoted natural healing. 

We just knew as a family unit. I had so much support from my husband and my mom and his mom that they were going to support us taking this route, even if it was going to take forever and it looked like she was going to suffer and we couldn't take it away immediately. I think that was the hardest part.  “Oh, just take it away. It'll be cleared up in a couple of days if you just do this quick cream or do this or that.” We went to the allergist and we went to the dermatologists and nothing ever sat right with me.  No one was recognizing it as a deep rooted, complex issue. It wasn't a skin issue and it's not a  lotion deficiency. Systematically her body is just not functioning where it can be optimally. And I just felt like there was a way to get there and the skin was an outward sign of an inward problem. 

There were some family members that it was just very difficult, and friends and coworkers and neighbors. It is so helpful when you do have a support system, someone in your corner.  Even if it's not your family, if it's just a friend, someone that says, “We're here to support you.  You're making the right decision. You're doing the absolute best you can.”  That really helps you get through every single day, which feels like a week when you're dealing with a child with eczema. 

Melissa Crenshaw  20:52  

Absolutely.  The skin, when we have eruptions and issues with the skin, that is our sign that there's something happening in the gut. The liver is struggling or the gut, the digestive system. When we try to attack the skin, the outward thing, and that's what most of the practitioners and doctors do.  Okay, there's a problem with the skin. Let's attack the skin. We got to go deeper and homeopathy goes deeper. 

I heard you say food restrictions. Are you still restricting foods for her? Are you starting to reintroduce?

Megan  21:38  

We are slowly starting to reintroduce some things. Probably at the end of June, we went dairy free, gluten free. We have been egg free her whole life.  She does have a documented egg allergy. It was just in the characteristic of some hives around her face and then it went away when she was younger, so we just stayed away from it. Over the break where we were on vacation, she did have lots of baked goods with baked eggs in them and I think that was one of the things that, it's just one of those intolerances for her and sensitivity. We are completely egg free but we have been reintroducing gluten and dairy and she has been great. No reactions.  We've been out at restaurants. My sister had a wedding this past weekend, and we let her eat the food at the reception. We knew everything was cooked in butter. There were croutons everywhere, and bread rolls, and she was just you taking bites of everything. We watched and waited and her skin never reacted when before we would cook chicken in butter and immediately she would just flare all over her body.

We noticed that if she did get a hold of a food sensitivity, after starting homeopathy, she may have a flare, but then by morning, it would be gone. The longevity of the reaction would get shorter and shorter to where it may be just a couple hours, or not at all. We just felt like her body was able to heal so much faster and she was tolerating so much more. Now we just don't feel as restrictive. I mean, we do try to eat a very clean diet, but we're not as absolutely petrified of food now.  We can breathe a little bit and she can eat more food so that was really exciting. She’s still not showing any sort of reaction, which is really great.

Melissa Crenshaw  23:59  

So two things. I would fully expect for you to be able to uproot even the egg allergy for her.  She's not going to have to be egg free for the rest of her life. Homeopathy can uproot that egg allergy. And whatever. If right now she's still having a little bit of a reaction, but it's shorter and less severe, it's coming to where she doesn't have a reaction at all. I would expect that. 

And then the other thing is, just to back up a little bit. When people were saying, “Oh, just hurry and give her the steroid because it'll give her fast relief.” The pure danger in that, that even doctors will admit, is that suppressed eczema very often turns into asthma later. I am not interested in contributing to my child not being able to breathe so that she won't suffer right now. I know that was hard. I absolutely know that was hard to do myself, but you did good and you did the right thing. You didn't contribute to long term health problems that are even worse. Asthma is worse than eczema.

Megan 25:13  

Yes, absolutely. The inflammation will just go somewhere.

Melissa Crenshaw  25:18  

Yeah. Bri, I've done all the talking. What do you want to say?

Bri Hurlburt  25:21  

It’s been so good. I knew the story, so this is great. If I remember right, I wanted to add a little bit of context, or just outside perspective, hearing you and walking with you through that. If I remember right, it was you and your mom. When we spoke, you guys had said that you wanted to take pictures all the time because you realized you had never seen her with clear skin.

Megan 25:27

Mm-hmm. 

Bri Hurlburt 25:48

Was that you that said that? 

Megan 25:49

Yes, yes. 

Bri Hurlburt 25:51

Which I just thought was so sweet, because you said it started when she was around three months old. You had that realization that you've never seen her regular skin, like her healthy skin. That was just a sweet thing I remember from our conversations. 

But I also wanted to ask a couple of things. One, you had accidentally or it kind of just worked out where you weaned off the remedies regularly, even before our last conversation. That's sometimes an approach that we take. Really, by the time we had met last year, she wasn't even on remedies, so in some of those clear pictures, she was not taking any remedies. And we tell people that, Melissa and I … Where homeopathy is different is we're not here to keep you as a client for 1000 years. We're not telling you to take remedies for the rest of your life. The goal is you won't have to take these and like you had said, she can encounter some of those disruptive things and not even need a remedy.  Her body now can respond appropriately how it should.

Megan 27:00

Yes. 

Bri Hurlburt 27:01

And eventually, hopefully, the goal would be that not at all. 

Okay, my question.  If you were to look back at yourself six months ago, or another mom who's in your shoes six months ago, how would you explain the perseverance that you needed? Because we had some hard conversations in the middle. And that one spot that was so hard to clear up.  What gave you the fortitude almost to just push through when you're here.  You are taking the homeopathy.  You're doing the remedies. This was kind of like, you were hoping this was the last thing that would work. And then it was still really hard. 

Megan 27:46  

I think first, just religion, being spiritual, and just being able to give some of that worry and stress up. I prayed a lot.  In the middle of the night, I would pray. I think it was something also that you told me.  I think it's the one thing that kind of stuck with me that kept me going was that healing was going to be circular. So often we want to see such a linear path of healing. The way that this worked for us is we would see good days and some improvement, and then we would see a really bad day. And then we had a really bad week, but then we would have a couple more good days. We felt like we were in this spiral of every time we hit a part of the spiral, she would have a flare. It's almost like we got bigger, and then it got longer, and then things were getting easier. It was just this constant like round and round, but we felt like all of a sudden, we were looking at our calendar, and we were like, “We haven't written down any flares in a couple of days.” That was subtle.  We didn't even realize that we were having more good days.  We were just kind of easing into it. It is such a slow progression, but just don't give up. It is something that is so deeply rooted and complex, you have to stick with it.  Something that complex is going to take time. 

Like Melissa said, the younger that you can start helping your baby through this, I really believe that children are such pure, receptive beings that they respond to homeopathy in such a beautiful way and so much faster because we're not having to take away all these layers, all this inflammation for years and years and years. They're just open and ready to receive healing. If you see your child or your infant starting to struggle, just know there's a safe and alternative and natural way to manage the symptoms and to provide healing. Honestly, I wish I could show you my cart of cream next to me.  It’s absolutely loaded with stuff, which I should just honestly get rid of, but we spent hundreds of dollars on things that maybe helped the texture of the eczema in the moment, but we can't say that any of those things really helped. I think that they can support, but homeopathy is just so … It's so hard to explain, but it is the catalyst truly. 

There are a couple of things. I mean, calendula.  That is homeopathy and that was probably the one oil or cream that we put on her that really kind of helped speed up some of the process, but everything else that was recommended, it was just putting a band-aid on it, I really feel like.  So just to know that something that is safe for a 90-year old and a nine week old is just so amazing to know that it is available and it can help. I mean truly.

Bri Hurlburt 31:36

Thank you so much.

Melissa Crenshaw  31:37  

Yes, thank you. That was such good encouragement from a mom who has just walked through this to moms who are just about to walk through it or who didn't even know there was another way, or who are walking through it right now and they're like, “This back and forth. I don't know. Is this really even working?” But I work mostly … I think Bri has all the babies and toddlers with eczema and I usually do the teens and adults. It is quite a bit harder. It does take longer because they're older and there's been more suppression in their life. 

Bri Hurlburt 32:22

There’s layers there when they're older.

Melissa Crenshaw  32:26  

But I hope that this encourages them to hang in there. I didn't mean for that to be like, “Oh Bri, you got an easy job.” You don't. Eczema’s hard. Skin things are one of the hardest things to do with homeopathy because we have to go deep and the skin is the last thing to heal. There was so much healing that went on in that baby's life, in that body, while we were using the homeopathy.

I hope that you'll choose to use homeopathy for the rest of your life, and for the rest of her life, because stuff will come.  There might even be another eczema flare in a year. And you'd be like, “Wait, there's a little tiny,”  I did that. There was a little tiny spot and I said, “I haven't seen that in years.” I'm not worried about it. I don't even take a remedy for it.  Sometimes there is like a little show here, not just eczema but other symptoms. If that happens, don't let it alarm you. It's just, “Oops, let's maybe give a dose,” of whatever remedies were working or call Bri and say, “Hey, what should I do?”

Yeah, her body now is reminded of what to do and how to heal.

Megan  33:39  

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And she did actually … She was running around outside and I think she rolled around in a pile of leaves without a shirt on a couple of weeks ago and it irritated her skin and it looked like she was having a flare. And we were like, “Oh my gosh.” We gave her one dose of the remedy that she was on and it was completely gone by the time she went to bed. This was like three o'clock to eight o'clock. We were like, “Oh, wait, it's not there anymore.” Usually that would be something that would last for a couple of days when her skin flared. Like you said, just one dose and we were able to get her back to baseline.  She's not perfect and there are things with her sensitive skin that still … We’ll never really know what these things are that set her skin off sometimes but now we feel like we have an answer and her body is so responsive to it now that she can just go right back to being a comfortable, healthy kid. So that's exciting.

Melissa Crenshaw  34:46  

I love it when … And you know what? One very last thought before we go is that you now have this … You've been empowered to take care of her yourself. Like you said, if the flare comes then you know exactly what remedy to give. You don't have to make an appointment and talk to Bri or me and pay.  You know what to do. And that's so beautiful. I love it. That’s what I want.  I want moms and families to know how to take care of their own children, their own families with homeopathy. 

Thank you so much for being here, Megan. I'm so thankful for you to share your story and share the pictures with everybody who watches and gets encouragement. And good job Bri.  Everybody loves Bri.  Really.  Really good job.

Bri Hurlburt  35:43  

I mean, working with her, and she's great. To also encourage you with that. Megan, following your mom's intuition in these decisions, and even decisions you made with remedies, has been amazing. We love that. I love seeing it. It's just been so refreshing. These are the stories we live for.  This is what we want people to hear when … Not that the other people aren't great to work with, but the cases can be really hard and they need encouragement. And so do we because there have been times I'm like, “I don't know what I'm doing. This is so hard.” 

Yeah, I’m like, “It does work, right?” Like I know it does. And then we hear these stories and I'm like, “Okay, it does. It really does.” It just takes more time, or different remedies in different situations.

Megan 36:34  

As many moms as can hear what you are both doing and that it does work. It just feels like it's everywhere now and it's just so more widespread. I just want as many moms to know that there is a safe alternative of healing that does work. I was so excited that you guys invited me because I just wanted to shout it from the rooftops

Melissa Crenshaw  37:03  

Thank you, thank you, thank you. So, you guys, go watch the YouTube video if you haven't yet and share this audio podcast or share the video so that other people can get encouraged. And stay tuned. We've got lots more things to share. This podcast is all about education and encouragement. You're going to get one or the other when you listen. Thanks for being here and have a great night.