2 years! Non-healing lesions, black specks in skin and sores, on arms and legs, MOLD? I have been suffering from *nearly* the same problem in the past 18 months. Nothing new or strange pre-meditating it, I simply woke up one day with the oddest combination-trauma: 1. the heavy plaque psoriasis patches on both my elbows and both my knees was GONE! Since age 14, now 48, and the miserable 1/4 inch thick scaly/flaky growth had vanished - VANISHED! - replaced by baby-smooth, only slightly dry skin! A miracle, right? No. See number 2.... 2. Both of my forearms had half a dozen or more little itchy red bumps, like pimples. I wondered: did something bite me last night? On both arms? Where is that bug, I thought, if it CURES psoriasis, then I m going to bottle it... The good news was short-lived, however. By the end of the week, those little bumps had become pustules, tiny but terrifying, and had popped like blisters, oozing a clear sticky, *silky* substance constantly. And there were more. The older ones had become crusting. They never dried up. Nothing affected them, although I DID have slight relief when I applied a moist paste of crushed aspirin, like a poultice: when it dried, the pieces broke off and I noticed something else strange, there were uniformly-sized, tiny black specks in the debri, as if SOMETHING had been drawn up from the blister/pustules by the aspirin. They didn t move. But they weren t blood or pus because they wouldn;t dissolve, either. It was determined by the dermatologist I saw, AND an emergency room doc, that my condition, which had spread to both legs, knee to ankle, was not parasitic (no scabies, no impetigo, no mites), was not an allergic reaction, was not any of the common forms of dermatitis or even ringworm... but no one could tell me what it was/is, exactly. Because of the SYMMETRY of it all (both arms, both legs) AND the related disappearance of the psoriasis on those limbs (arms, legs), the best I could gather was I had some weird auto-immune thing going on. By the sixth month, my arms were covered with lesions, blisters and scabs, all in varied stages of launch and lull: they were simply not going to just go away. And I had become convinced that the black specks that were WITHIN the sores, under my skin, were, in fact, SOMETHING parasitic, they HAD to be, even if I couldn t see them *moving*, as such. They are oval in shape, with a distinct - even in their TINIEST stage, barely visibly -- head or top, like a nub, and, in the larger *adult*? ones, (fatter, rounder, not black any longer but a reddish-brown color, some almost TRANSPARENT/TRANSLUCENT), about the size of a straight pin cap (not the ball kind, the regular flat top ones), I can even make out some sort of APPENDAGES, evenly spaced on the sides, maybe two or three on each side, something towards the back... If I knew how to work one, and set up slides, I d have bought a microscope and done so by now... ANyway. They ITCH. Terribly. AT times, I can feel my skin CRAWLING, usually in the area of a pretty active lesion. If I use the tip of a clean Exacto blade, gently lifting a bit of the drying, trying-to-heal-skin around a lesion, two, three, four or more of these little specks ROLL OUT OF MY SKIN and off!!! When I took a tiny vial of some samples to my skin doc, I was made to feel like a FOOL. I was ridiculed for researching on the internet, *reminded* that I have had skin problems all my life (psoriasis) and that the meds I take for chronic pain (spinal, from an injury) and menopause can CAUSE side-effects that would make me ITCH (so therefore, I need to STOP scratching and picking at my skin with a razor blade and let them HEAL ! As if I had somehow caused them in the first place...), and, perhaps worst of all, admonished to get THERAPY because no normal person would collect scabs or skin and put them in a vial to show off (forget that I was bringing in what I thought to be EVIDENCE to HELP my doc see what I was TALKING about, nope, I was COLLECTING bits so I must be OCD or something...). That was the first and LAST time I saw a doc about this. And that was over a year and a half ago. It will be two years this June. In the last year, I have discovered that there was such a heavy concentration of mold AND asbestos in my kitchen, after the 75 year old ceiling of the 100-year old kitchen caved in after a rainstorm (guess what? that rainstorm happened a few weeks before my arms and legs broke out, too) and stayed exposed forever after that (because once it was determined the tiles were the old asbestos kind from the 30 s, no carpenter would even TOUCH the job). I became convinced I had MOLD under my skin. Maybe it didn t START that way, maybe mold simply got in by way of the open blisters during the following months. The table and counters were COATED with a layer of the sooty black stuff, and I couldn t use my kitchen for cooking because the stuff would just float down and into pots and pans and plates, but because the only bathroom in the house, the washer and dryer, the microwave and the fridge were in there, it was inescapable. It took me another YEAR (I m disabled and on SSDI so couldn t get the help I needed to move right away) to FINALLY get someone in a womens aid group to recognize my dilemma and get me into a state-subsidized apartment. I lost my house because no one would help me fix it. And I lost everything in it, because I had no one to help me move everything out of it (and into storage, which I also couldn t afford). So now I live, since last September, in a tiny 2-room apartment, but it s clean and easy to manage, so there was some good there. And the housing agency FIXES problems here, when they occur, unlike the house I WAS living in (and trying to keep buying). It s senior-living housing, but I don t mind. Being disabled puts me in need of this kind of living arrangement anyway. So the lesions on my arms and legs BEGAN clearing up! I must have done SOMETHING right in the move (no longer being exposed to the powdery fall of decades-old mold and asbestos), because 90% of my arms and legs have cleared up, although the SCARS are tremendous, still tender to the touch, PURPLE in color, but at least the skin has grown back over what was once there. BUT, on my legs and arms, there are at least three or four lesions that just won t go away. It is here I know the *problem* seems to have migrated, its last stand or something. These last stand lesions are 10 times worse than the ones that used to cover my arms and legs, because, in these, the concentration of fungi/bacteria/etc. is extremely high. Pull back the edge of one, and the black seed-like little things come rolling and popping out. The ones I ve managed to catch on a paper plate are HARD, like a salt crystal, but are uniform and BLACK, like pepper. The large ones that are reddish-brown color or flesh-colored translucent are more adhered to the lesion, along the edges of or UNDER the scab/crust, and are softer (I can break them in half, and it feels kind of like when you pick a flea off your dog or cat, and break it with your fingernails: it kind of *pops*...). Further, if I clean or wash a lesion thoroughly, then apply any of several creams I have on hand now (cortisone, anti-itch stuff, bacitracin, etc.) black specks RISE to the surface of the wound, but those do not rolloff, they have to be LIFTED off, and they CLING, painfully. They are NOT BLOOD. Most of the times I lift or remove one, there IS NO BLEEDING as long as I m only removing the speck or seed, depending on whatever stage or size it is. I am convinced *SOMETHING* is under my skin and FEEDING off me, content to cluster in the few locations remaining on my arms and legs but stubbornly refusing to completely die off and/or leave... They are nowhere else on me, and I ve haad other wounds and sores, bites and pimples, that have healed and gone away like they should, like they have my WHOLE LIFE. But THIS STUFF, in the three to four or five remaining spots on EACH forearm and leg, I have never seen the likes of, my WHOLE LIFE. Even if, over the next few months, the remaining spots DID slowly dry out/heal/go away, I want to KNOW what the eff this IS (was?), so I can AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE, whatever it is. AND warn others to watch out and be informed/warned, too. WHat DOES this sound like? Can I be any more descriptive? My meds have been the same now, for almost four and a half years: 90mg daily of Kadian (Morphine, for the spinal stenosis pain) and twice daily Cymbalta (for the menopause symptoms) and Vicodin (for the frequent break-through pain) and occasionally 3 to 4 Ibuprofen (for the WORST episodes of break-through pain, an hour or so later when it becomes clear the Vicodin s not making enough of a dent). I smoke a pack a day (i know, I know, but I ve been smoking sine I was 14: I was a 2 to 3 pack a day smoker until about 7 years ago, when I lost my job, home, car, and everything else after my back injury. I just couldn t afford it, so cut WAY back. It s the stress-relief of one now and then I use to cope with constant pain, living on a shoes-string, the LESIONS, etc. Quitting completely s just not going to happen right now), have a Flamepoint Siamese kitty (he ll be 6 in July 2011)... I don t wear makeup, use hairspray, perfume etc. (again, I just don t go anywhere much the past 7+ years, can t afford to). Any guesses? Does anyone else have something similar? All I know is: I m NOT a doctor, BUT I KNOW my body, and I know the difference between a *normal* sore/scab/skin condition, and THIS... *THIS* ain t normal . Frustrated, incessantly plagued and desperate for AN ANSWER... Shea