Encounter Journal #5

 Hello Journal,

I noticed my father clawing his skin so hard a few days ago (especially his leg). He's a psoriatic patient, and it's difficult to look at his skin and see him scratching all over. Psoriasis is a skin ailment in which red, itchy scaly patches appear on the knees, elbows, trunk, and scalp, among other locations. My father is currently at an advanced stage of psoriasis, which means he has psoriasis all over his body—elbows, hands, neck, posterior parts of his body, legs, and thighs. Even though psoriasis is an autoimmune illness, something happens to his cells. When I was younger, I used to wonder why his body (including the skin on his legs, scalp, hands, and palms, among other places) removes so many dandruff-like substances. And he explained to me that those are his dying cells. I was terrified when I heard it for the first time. I didn't have any scientific background at the time, and my first thought was that something terrible was going to happen to my father as his cells died. However, when I learned more about it, I realized that with psoriasis, the life cycle of skin cells is substantially accelerated, resulting in an accumulation of dead cells on the epidermis surface.