After I posted about our adventures with eczema, many things happened.

My weird sense of humour thinks that if I ended this post like that, it would be hilarious.

Anyway, I put cold chamomile compresses on Autumn's itchy spots and had her take oatmeal baths and the rash itself cleared up and healed. But an area next to where the rash had been became infected because she had scratched it so much. Last night John took her for a quick visit to the ER because the infection suddenly got way worse - clear fluid suddenly just started oozing from different areas and she couldn't sleep and it was nasty. So she's gotten some antibiotics and hopefully that fixes the whole thing. Just a side note... they were only in the hospital for an hour total and waited about 2 minutes - in Canada! lol

BUT, what caused all this in the first place? The doctor agreed with me in that she probably has eczema triggered by an allergic reaction to the topical anesthetic they put on her arms in the summer, and they put that stuff on her allergic list. So now her body is super sensitive to EVERYTHING. We already do not eat dairy, food coloring or preservatives of any kind, and we tend to eat about 50-75% organic, which is what we can afford. We use no chemical cleaners, and all of our soap is fragrance free and usually very natural, if not homemade.

So what's left? I've narrowed it down to a few things:
Cats
Wheat
Detergent (even though it is a very natural German one, it still has fragrance in it and stuff)
Synthetic fibers

My next goal is to eliminate those four things. The biggest one to change is the wheat. So we're doing an experiment and we switched to basically an almost completely raw food diet. It's almost because we are still eating some bran cereal, granola and some soy milk, and some rice crackers. The only thing I added to our diet was some yoghurt - Autumn needs it since she's on antibiotics. I have a whole bunch of organic quinoa that I started sprouting instead of cooking, and I am experimenting with sprouting lentils too. I don't even try to make those fancy raw-food recipes that sell so many cookbooks. We just bought tons of fruit and vegetables and we just eat it. For example yesterday:

Breakfast: Granola and rice milk
Lunch: oranges, raisins, almonds, cherry tomatoes, rice crackers, guacamole
Dinner: Salad with sun dried tomatoes, and watermelon
Bedtime snack: Strawberry, mango smoothies

We got a Magic Bullet a while ago and we get juice in bulk that is mango carrot or something... it has two servings of fruit and two servings of vegetables. Then we get big bags of frozen fruit and blend it with the juice and it's soooo yummy! I will report back after our bodies have adjusted and we'll see how it goes.