I Used to Be Embarrassed by My Plaque Psoriasis. Now, I Empower Others
Key takeaways:
Alisha Bridges was diagnosed with plaque psoriasis when she was 7.
As a child, she was nearly 90% covered with scaly patches. Now, at 37, her skin is mostly clear.
She uses her experience to advocate for others and help answer their questions.
Alisha Bridges says her pivotal moment in accepting her psoriasis came when she had her first encounter with a support association.
In most cases, people with a health condition find the support group that works for them. In Alisha’s case, the group found her.
Her words reached people who turned out to be her supporters
Alisha, a copywriter in Atlanta, was diagnosed with plaque psoriasis when she was 7 after a bad case of chickenpox.
She had been living with the warring emotions of the disease for nearly 15 years when she decided to write a blog post with a poignant, painful message. She titled it, “My Suicide Letter.” In it, she described her desire not to end her life — but to start it.
What’s it like to pay to treat plaque psoriasis? Alisha Bridges, the subject of the story below, also talks in this story about the challenges of paying for biologics.
What are common psoriasis triggers? Medications, food, alcohol, and stress are all common ones.
What does it feel like to have psoriasis? Read about three people’s experiences.
“It was about killing the parts of me that would not allow myself to live because of psoriasis — the fear, the shame, the embarrassment, the unworthiness,” Alisha says. “And I remember saying in that letter that it would be a slow death. But eventually, I would break free from these parts of me that would not allow me to live.”
The post got the attention of many readers, and one sent her post to the National Psoriasis Foundation. The foundation then invited Alisha to a volunteer conference. And that’s where, for the first time, she met a supportive circle of people living with the disease.
A patient advocacy conference changed her life
Alisha attended workshops over multiple days. “After I left there, I just felt so empowered to do something different,” she says. “That was the start of my advocacy and the turning point in my life and dealing with psoriasis.”
From then on, she saw a new focus for herself.
“That volunteer conference really changed my life in a way that I would have never imagined,” she says. Eventually, she would allow herself to be honest and vulnerable about her disease, “letting people into such intimate details of my life that once embarrassed me and made me feel a lot of shame.”
Overcoming painful childhood experiences
That was a monumental shift from the early days of her diagnosis. At about age 10, in fifth grade, Alisha says, she began to realize she had a visible condition that made her different from other people. She started to hide.
At that time, her body was about 90% covered with scaly psoriasis spots. The questions and speculation hurt. A group of girls in her neighborhood once started a rumor that she was being burned with cigarettes.
She loved running track, but the stares and comments were too much. She began to wear long sleeves and pants. “It could be 100 degrees outside, and I was covered up,” she says.
Psoriasis treatments were limited when she was growing up, especially for children. She tried some topical and oral medications.
Physicians also prescribed occlusion therapy, which meant applying topical medications to affected areas and wrapping her body with a waterproof material to increase their effectiveness. She describes her experience as wearing a “plastic suit” for 8 hours at a time.
Cheering medical advances and enduring financial burdens
Eventually, biologics would become available for treating psoriasis, and Alisha has tried four kinds in recent years.
The first cleared her psoriasis by about 80%, she says. She has been injecting her most recent one, Skyrizi (risankizumab-rzaa), once every 12 weeks. It “has me 100% clear for now.” But it’s the “for now” that has her worried.
She says she recently had to leave her last job to protect her mental health, and her benefits there had mostly covered the cost of the injections. Without insurance or discounts, the medicine can cost more than $19,000 for each injection. Alisha recently told GoodRx her story of the financial toll of dealing with plaque psoriasis. She says paying for biologics has been a challenge because of insurance issues.
“There’s always an uphill battle with keeping my skin clear that’s not just related to having the disease itself,” she says.
Dealing with the mental stress of having a chronic condition
Alisha says it’s also important to consider the potential mental health component that comes with having a chronic condition.
She urges others in her situation to find an online support group. Responding to questions and stares is stressful enough, she says. But, physically, psoriasis and stress are strongly linked. Therapy can also help keep mental health in check, she advises. Making meditation and exercise part of her daily routine has also been essential to her progress, she says.
Learning to shift her mindset
When Alisha looks back at her three decades living with psoriasis, she says she wonders whom she might have been without her disease. “Would I have played sports? Would I have taken more risks?”
But Alisha has also found an unexpected beauty amid the struggle. She says.psoriasis has made her more empathetic and compassionate in interacting with others.
“It has given me a purpose and passion to get the word out about this condition,” she says.
Alisha does that in a variety of ways now, including creating social media posts, fundraising, and serving in patient advisory roles.
“When I’m having challenging times in life, I pull from my journey with psoriasis because it started off as so grim. And now it is turned into something that is truly beautiful, in a sense, because it has challenged me and allowed me to grow in ways that I could have never imagined,” she says.
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