A CHESHIRE schoolboy who endured months of agonising pain due to his debilitating eczema has been able to go back to school with a smile thanks to new treatment.

Ben Thomas, 10, was a hardworking, cheerful student in Year 6 when Covid-19 struck.

Prone to bouts of eczema, his problems were exacerbated by the virus, joining everyone around him in washing his hands regularly for 20 seconds at a time. Ben’s hands become sore, dry and uncomfortable as a result.

Mum Sarah Thomas said: “It was hard to manage it because I couldn’t control the products that he was using at school.

"The school worked with me to try and ensure Ben was using his own products but it’s difficult for any school to fully manage a request like that, nothing we did seemed to be stopping the eczema from getting worse."

Unfortunately, things deteriorated rapidly. Ben’s hands became incredibly sore and itchy, which in itself was difficult to deal with. But worse still, his fingers were so cracked he couldn’t bend them to hold a pencil.

Sarah added: “It wasn’t just affecting him physically, but mentally too. His hands looked so unpleasant, he felt really self conscious. That was awful for him and heart-breaking for my husband and I, we felt so guilty that we couldn’t find anything to help him."

None of the remedies suggested by the doctor made a difference, and Ben’s hands quickly became very painful and cracked.

He had open sores on his knuckles and fingers that bled. He was falling behind with his schoolwork and rather than writing, he would hide his hands in the sleeves of his school jumper so other children couldn’t see them.

But even that didn’t work. After the last day that he went to school, he came home very upset because children had been teasing him about his hands.

Sarah explained: “It was such a worrying time for us and particularly distressing for Ben. I arranged a telephone appointment with the doctor who felt that the skin on his fingers had become infected and prescribed him an antibiotic cream to use for two weeks.

“The doctor advised we didn’t send him back into school, which was a very emotive decision.

"Ben is in Year 6, his final year at primary school and so not sending him into school for his last day meant that he didn’t get to see his friends and potentially won’t have had the opportunity to say ‘goodbye’ to his primary school. It was an emotional time."

The course of antibiotic cream cleared the infection on his fingers but did not help with healing any of this very dry and cracked skin.

None of the emollient creams they’d previously used were working.

Following an online search, Sarah found an article about how the Childs Farm hand cream was proving to really help people’s hands that were suffering from all the washing.

She went straight out to buy the cream and handwash and within days could see visible improvement, on Ben’s hands. The redness from his eczema was visibly reducing each day and his hands were starting to feel much more comfortable.

They changed the soap and hand cream in all of their bathrooms and in the kitchen to Childs Farm and still can’t believe the difference.

The improvement in Ben’s hands is remarkable and he no longer has any soreness or irritation and the dryness is getting a bit better every day.

Ben said he has more confidence as he’s no longer worried about what people will think when they see his hands.

Ben, who lives with his family in Macclesfield, returned to school on June 29. As he is in Year 6, these will be his last few weeks at primary school. And he can’t wait!

Gone is the shy boy, unable to write because of his painful hands, and gone also is the debilitating eczema that kept him away from his friends.

Sarah has already bought some mini Childs Farm products for him to take with him. She is adamant that nothing will get in his way, and he’ll get to see out his last days at his school.

Sarah added: “I’m so grateful to Childs Farm and their products for transforming my son’s hands.

"Without them, I think I’d have wasted a lot of money trying various different products and seeing no results. I think we’d have also been back to the doctors to get more antibiotic cream. I also think I’d have had a very sad little boy!"