Laura Rose, 42, spent years working as a bikini model, taking part in beauty pageants and maintaining her image for events and social media. Everything changed when her skin problems, which she had suffered from since childhood due to eczema, began to worsen severely.
Since childhood, she used prescribed topical steroid creams to control the itching. Over time, the treatments stopped helping and Laura began to experience symptoms associated with topical steroid withdrawal, a reaction she describes as devastating to her body and daily life.
The inflammation, burning, cracks, swelling and pain have left her hospitalized and bedridden during intense flare-ups. She even compared her appearance to Freddy Krueger, not as a lighthearted joke, but as a way of explaining how unrecognizable she came to feel when looking in the mirror.
