My name is Daniel.
I live in Long Beach.
I'm 30 and have severe psoriasis.
My psoriasis covers about 85 to 95% of my entire body.
Psoriasis is an overactive immune system.
It thinks that I'm a virus, basically.
It first started when I was 12 years old, and it's extremely painful and it grows
incredibly fast.
There's the splitting that happens every time I move up and down due to the platelets.
Platelets are parts of the skin where my body is developing skin cells faster than
normal, so they just build up and build up into these solid silver, scaly lesions.
When I stand up, it straightens out and separates, and all of this stings like little
razor blade cuts.
When I sleep at night, the platelets get a chance to grow together, and so it creates an
entire plate that won't give.
I feel entombed in my own skin when I move.
They break and they'll bleed and they burn and they itch.
It feels like a thousand needles all over me.
And then somebody poured gasoline on me and lit the match.
For now, all I have is a temporary cream here.
Doctors, when they see my case, never follow through with things that will fix me.
I've had one where I called and I cried while I was on the phone and I said, Look,
I'm just looking to be healed.
My access to medicines has been restricted by my insurance, so I have to use whatever
over-the-counter I can.
It's almost not worth it.
I've tried, but it doesn't help.
Something this severe.
One, two, three, five, six.
Yay! I have a wife, Amy, and my daughter, Scarlet.
She's really active and energetic.
Thank you. My joints have definitely been hurting more than usual because of my skin.
It crushes me when she says, like, Dad, play with me and I have to tell her I can't.
Careful, Scarlet.
Be careful. You won't hurt Daddy.
My joint pains are connected to my psoriasis.
When I have a flare up or I'm anxious or nervous, it actually hurts me.
It's okay, Daddy. Play later.
I, uh. I feel she deserves more.
How are you doing?
Hanging in there. My shedding is terrible.
If you collectively bring all the rooms together.
A pile of skin, like an entire me.
I can't sweep up after my own flakes.
And that falls on the shoulder of my wife because if I sweep, I'll leave a trail of
dust behind me. It'll be a trail.
Clean it up. And another trail.
I feel like if we can get your condition stable enough, the financial stability will
follow that.
My wife and I had a cleaning business.
We were doing phenomenal, but my psoriasis got so bad it was really counterproductive to
even have me in there.
When you wash a wall and the skin goes on the wall.
So I tried where I could, but my wife had taken it all on her shoulders, but that was
too much. So we reluctantly had to just call it.
This causes you pain, this causes you anxiety.
You have trouble picking up Scarlett, you know, like you can't even be the father that
you want to be because your skin is holding you back.
Daniel's skin condition takes control of his whole life, so a lot of the stress has been
on me to work and take care of Scarlett.
Keep things clean.
But I let him know that being the sole supporter of the household isn't a problem if
we're working on getting him better, having somebody who's actually interested in your
case would be leaps and bounds towards where we need to be.
I couldn't agree more.
I can't even explain what being normal could bring as far as my happiness.
There's nothing else that could ever make me happier.
If this gets cleared.
I can do anything.
You up on your that trick.
Today I'm at Dr.
Lee's office, and I'm hoping that Dr.
Lee will be able to do something to help me out so I don't have to deal with this.
I feel like my skin puts me in a prison mentally and physically.
Definitely tired of it trying to pull me down when I'm trying to fight so hard to have
a normal life.
Go ahead and have a seat.
And Dr. Lee should be coming in shortly.
Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.
My worst nightmare would be if there was no way to help.
Because I can't keep living like this.
I don't know how much more I can take.
I am running out of time.
Hi. Hi.
How are.
You?
Good, How are you?
I'm well. I'm Dr.
Lee. It's really nice to meet you.
Looks like you have psoriasis.
It is, right? What percentage of your body would you say you have it?
About 90.
90%. Okay, let me take a look and see what you have here.
You have it all over your chest and your.
Okay, let's take a look.
Oh, yeah. Does it hurt here, too?
Psoriasis is a fairly common skin condition.
It actually affects one out of 100 people in the United States.
It is a condition of an overactive immune system, which really means that our skin kind
of turns over more quickly our skin cells.
So you get these thick plaques on the skin.
Daniel here has a particularly severe case because it affects 90% of his body.
Yeah, yeah, you poor thing.
And here on your tush.
Here on your upper thighs, probably, too.
Yeah. Okay. Okay.
All right. And you also have arthritic changes.
One thing that goes along with psoriasis is aching of your joints, especially the knees.
Yeah, sometimes. Also like the thumbs around the hands.
Or. So that's the worst part about it.
Now it's been progressive.
It's my pretty much all of my joints, my ankles, knees.
Yes. Yeah.
Okay. In psoriasis, people can have just skin lesions.
They can have just arthritis or they can have both.
It's not uncommon to have both.
And in his case, unfortunately, he has pain because of psoriatic arthritis and he has
pain and skin lesions because of his skin.
Psoriasis treatment is really dictated by how much it bothers you.
It's not life threatening, okay, But it's important to treat because it helps to treat
your head because it really is something that affects your life deeply.
It's that's definitely true.
It's consumed me.
It's every chance it gets.
I see psoriasis.
When I look in the mirror, I see psoriasis.
It's pretty much stolen my entire life.
Well, we need to steal that back.
So I think you need something that works on the inside.
And I think it would be certainly worthwhile to use something like a biologic medication,
which is an injection, but it could help the joints as well.
And we might even be able to treat you today before you go your first treatment sounds
great. I'm really excited. I'm really excited for you too.
There's no immediate cure that I can give.
Daniel. I can't scrape it off.
I can't pop out his psoriasis, but there are some things I can start him on that can
really help to improve his life.
Let me see if I have any cosentyx in the fridge.
We store it in the fridge.
I mean not in the fridge. We store our like our lunches, but in our medical fridge.
Don't accidentally bring me a sandwich.
No. You want a sandwich too?
I'll be back. Okay.
Okay. Okay. This medication is really great because it treats both psoriatic arthritis
and psoriasis lesions, and Daniel has both.
So I think this is really quickly going to get Daniel back to a normal life.
So what you have to do is you do it one in each thigh each time for a five weeks, and
then after that you do it once a month.
And so we'll see this little recipe works for you.
And I think that's the really the best because it's going to work internally and
help you internally. And that's what we need, especially for your arthritis.
What's really great about a biologic medication is he can self-administer, he can
give himself the injections at home, which means that he doesn't have to have as many
visits to see me in the office.
And he can get better as quickly as he can.
I got some gifts for you.
I come bearing gifts.
I'm excited.
I've got four treatments for you.
That's four weeks.
Okay, So we're going to get you started this.
And I think by the time you finish that fourth one, we should be seeing some
improvements. Okay.
I can't absolutely guarantee that this is going to work, but this is our opportunity to
get out of this hole.
I think I'm excited for this whole thing.
Yeah, I'm excited for you, too.
I'm not really worried that it won't work.
I think it's more of a stepping stone no matter what.
I think that we'll work together and we'll make sure it works.
Oh, sweetheart.
Oh, you're so welcome. I'm so happy for you.
Don't lose these.
I'll keep them next to my sandwiches.
Yeah. Next to your sandwiches?
Yeah. This is the beginning of my story.
This is where I break off all the scales and reach for the stars.
And this time, there won't be anything holding me back.