Stéphanie's Story

My name is Stéphanie Merhand.

I suffer from eczema, asthma and allergies.

At the age of 22, I created with another patient the French Association of Eczema. Our association was born in 2011. We wanted from the outset to break the isolation that patients live with this disease. It is difficult to understand what we can live until we have lived it ourselves. We work every day very hard for this project to continue, it's not easy every day, but we know why we are working so hard!

Eczema is not recognized in France and yet we are more than 2,500,000 patients who have to deal with dry skin, which itches and can sometimes be very painful. This disease does not matter to everyone, yet people’s lives and families can be destroyed. It is a real ordeal that I do not wish upon anyone.

Itching

When the attack starts I become uncontrollable.
My dear friend moves forward to help me,
Before everything gets unbearable.
I go mad with anger.
I itch all over.
It’s difficult to sit down to find peace and calm.
I control nothing.
It’s getting stronger every second,
a limitless violence; try to calm the evil wave.
I’m not myself.
Someone else has taken over!
How can he love me?
The umpteenth attack and I fall into his arms.
Reason and pain catch up. I’m left feeling awkward
for not having been able to stop on my own.
My everyday - Edilivre

Writing helped me a lot to put into words what I feel. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I wrote a series of poems so that one day I could explain to my daughter why her mother was not perfect. But what happiness to be a mother. We have the right to happiness, we have the right to become parents.