Most people do not seem to be conscious of the need for a healthy skin until they have a problem, possibly because most people seem to be able to get away with it; but for a few of us it is not so easy.

I was only 14 years old when my family moved to another part of the country, it was a very distressing time for me as all my friends were left behind. I began to notice dry scaly patches all over my body, under my nails and on my head, behind my ears and all over my limbs, although my face was not affected. I covered up but felt dirty scratching my body all the time. People would stare and I could hear nasty comments - you feel isolated being a teenager with something wrong with

After having suffered for several months from what my unsympathetic doctor called 'chilblains' in my blue sausage-shaped toes, apart from the fact that I could only walk with difficulty and had a large patch of psoriasis on one of my legs, I was diagnosed as having psoriatic arthritis.

I contracted psoriasis at the age of 6 and have had it ever since (I am now 58). I remember it very clearly. I just woke up one morning and looked at my hands and feet and they were encrusted in this horrible scaly stuff. I screamed my head off. My parents were very distressed as well since they did not know what was wrong.

With hindsight, the origins of my husband’s psoriatic arthritis goes back many years. He tells me that he had psoriasis as a child, but I wasn't around then, and it had long cleared when I met him. Both his father and his paternal grand-father suffered from arthritis. The latter's starting in his mid-40s. I don't know what type of arthritis they had.

It was about four years ago now when I was first hit with the devastating news that I had psoriasis. "Psoriasis" what's that?" was the first question that I asked only to discover later how common the condition was. Finding out what I had, in one sense, was a relief because it meant that there actually was a reason for the pain in my joints (mainly elbows, knees and feet at that time], the constant feeling of tiredness and the strange patches on my knees which weren't going away.

I was 18 when I first discovered psoriasis in my scalp, but, after treatment, this was not really a problem. About a year later three of my toes became swollen and were so painful that it was difficult to put any weight on them. My GP thought I had an infection and treated me with antibiotics.

I was twelve years old when I first noticed that my right knee was swollen and painful. My GP referred me to an orthopaedic specialist, who aspirated my knee and sent the fluid off for analysis; a procedure that I was to endure regularly for many months! My leg was put in a full plaster cast and soon after I was admitted to hospital for a tissue biopsy. I spent the next nine months having my knee aspirated weekly, and finally my parents were told that I had septic arthritis.

I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis in October 2009. For years I have had problems with swollen joints, I visited my doctor several times explaining the joint that was swollen at that point. I went through several blood tests and x-rays but nothing was pin-pointed and so the doctors did nothing.