The beginning of Subtle Scents.

My son was officially diagnosed at 3 months old, with head-to-toe eczema. The doctor told me he had seborrheic eczema on his scalp and atopic eczema over the rest of his body. At that time, I had no idea about eczema. I was about to learn fast.  He was itchy a lot! He would sleep well when I rubbed his itchy back, I would fall asleep, then he would wake up because he was itchy again as I had stopped rubbing. We were given steroid creams to ease the inflammation and aqueous cream to moisturise his skin. No one mentioned side effects at all. He was 8 months old when he had his first anaphylactic reaction, I had no idea about those either.  He reacted to peanut butter that he didn’t even eat, his brother ate it next to him. We went to the emergency medical centre, the doctor on duty prescribed antihistamine for him & said ‘good luck, you’re going to need it with him’. The doctors started predicting all of the jobs that he wouldn’t be able to do, they didn’t expect him to ever be eczema free with how bad it was.

This was happening back in the days when we had home phones instead of cell phones & not many people had access to the internet. Not that long ago really. Research was not easy without the internet; I relied heavily on the medical professionals that were meant to be helping us on our journey. Honestly, they weren’t very helpful at all.

5 days before his 1^st birthday, he had his 2^nd anaphylactic reaction, this time to black pepper. His little body was swelling up, I gave him some antihistamine, his 2^nd dose in a couple of hours and rang the hospital. They put me through to the emergency department, I told them what was happening and what was different in what he had eaten, they told me that it wasn’t possible to react to black pepper and hung up. They didn’t mention that his insides were swelling as much as the outsides, or that his airways were swelling shut, or to call an ambulance or even to bring him in.  Just that it wasn’t possible. I stayed up with him all night that night and miraculously, he made it through. We had allergy testing done & found that he had a dozen food allergies, some anaphylactic & some made his eczema worse. I removed every food that he was allergic to from the house, unfortunately, he still had allergies to external things. I requested an epi pen from our doctor; he told me that he didn’t need it as he was with me all the time. Just after his first birthday, he was referred to a paediatrician. He was getting worse. Literally his whole body was raw & weeping with following the medical professional's advice.

After about 10 years of this, we were told that the aqueous cream that we had been told to use several times a day, every day for most of his life, actually makes eczema worse. A couple of years later, I found out that if you use steroid cream on infected eczema, it makes it worse. He was little, he scratched, there was infection. With this new knowledge, we could better manage his eczema. A change of moisturiser and making sure there wasn’t even a tiny bit of infection when using steroid creams started to make a little bit of difference, but not enough.

He managed to make it through most of his teenage years barely managing his skin. Through clothes sticking to his open wounds, through not being able to always join in with his peers & siblings, through the constant shedding of his skin and through the relentless bullying because he looked different.

At 16 he was referred to a skin specialist. There was a list of immune suppressants and chemotherapies that could help make him better and give him a normal life. None of them worked. He was in pain all the time, he couldn’t work, he couldn’t do what his peers & siblings were doing. Most of the time, he barely left the house. He left specialist care worse than when he started. His skin was worse and now he had no immune system either. He was deflated. He asked me if I could help even though we had no idea at the time what that would look like.

I started researching and learning. I had already learnt a lot during his journey, now I was learning a whole lot more. I made the Healing Balm for him; we started seeing some results, but his skin still hurt. I was asked by a friend if I could make something for arthritis. I made Ease My Pain, it worked for her arthritis and my sons skin pain. Another friend had leukaemia, she tried the balm for her cancer pain, it worked for her too. Unfortunately, she lost her battle, but it gave her some relief from the pain while she was still with us. Now it’s been tried on a lot of different types of pain, with amazing results. Over the last 5 years, I’ve created a range of products for family, friends and the local markets, now it's time to share them with you.