Psoriasis robs Oregon man of his job and more

Psoriasis Awareness Month

Psoriasis robs Oregon man of his job and more

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- It all started with this weird itching on Alan Eisenberg's arms.

"I'd break out in this itching craziness on my arm -- burning, itching -- but nothing was there," said Eisenberg, 62, of Portland , Ore.

Moisturizer didn't help, and the itching got worse, seeming to fluctuate with his stress level. Eisenberg was a city bus driver at the time so stress was a regular part of his life.

"One day I broke out, and I had a map of the Pyrenees on my back and my head, and that was when the skin lesions started," he said. "I went to a dermatologist. She took one look at it and said, 'You have psoriasis.'" That was in 2006.

Eisenberg had been seeing a rheumatologist because he was suffering from arthritis in his joints, and he made an appointment to see the doctor about his psoriasis. Looking back, he said, "I tend to thinkthat was the beginnings of the psoriatic arthritis I have now."

Before the appointment, though, "my fingernails began to lift off the nail beds," Eisenberg said. "I thought I had flesh-eating bacteria. I was freaking out."

The rheumatologist started Eisenberg on a series of different self-injected drugs to treat the psoriasis. The first drug helped restore his nails, but the pain in his joints was getting worse and the skin lesions were not improving.

And people started noticing his condition.

"I was looking like something from a B-film," he said. "About 75 percent of my body was covered. People would look at me and ask, 'Is that contagious?' If I didn't like them, I'd say, 'Yes it is,'" Eisenberg recalled with a chuckle.

But he said the sensations from the skin lesions were driving him crazy: "They itched all the time. You just want to rip at it all the time, but you can't because you open them up and, if you open them up, you're prone to infection."

But after several tries, the doctor found a drug that helped resolve Eisenberg's psoriatic arthritis pain and heal the skin lesions.

The cure didn't come soon enough to save his career, however.

"I am out on medical disability and will be medically retired in November," he said. "I'm really sorry because I didn't want to retire yet. I really enjoyed being a bus driver. The pain had come to a point I wasn't able to safely drive a bus. It just takes your focus away, and you can't have things take your focus away from driving your bus."

The lesions are mostly gone these days, but Eisenberg still struggles with pain.

"My good hours are right after I wake up, and then I have three to four hours where the pain doesn't interfere with my life," he said. "And then the rest of the day, I have a 16-year-old kid to do things for me. I'm doing OK. It's just realizing that, no, I can't mow my lawn anymore -- so my kid does it. But I used to love the smell of cutting the fresh grass."