Day 19 - What You Get With a Stay at the Dead Sea Spa Hotel and Brief Treatment Thoughts

For those who will be or are considering coming to the Dead Sea Spa Hotel, I wanted to include a few particulars on what you will get when you decide to stay here (or not).

What you will get from a room in the newer building (I can't speak of the older bungalow units)
-safe in your room for valuables
-small refrigerator
-a hair dryer
-balcony with chairs and a space to hang laundry
-a bathtub with an extendable clotheline
-a tv with a fair amount of channels and a DVD player
-an electric hot water kettle
-2 small water bottles daily (600 mL each)
-usually extremely slow internet (the average of the last 3 days has been a .07 Mbps download rate, painfully slow for most things)--to expect to be able to regularly watch videos from the internet is not realistic; at times it's surprisingly fast but it appears it is this way when they reset it and this is about only 5% of the time. Skype calls are usually just okay or just in and out--it's very unpredictable.
-a breakfast and dinner buffet (drinks are included for breakfast but not for dinner)
-a pretty nice, newly renovated gym
-a gift shop primarily with overpriced Dead Sea skin products
-unfortunately the food options are not so great for lunch: it's either the same restaurant as breakfast/dinner or a meal at the Sports Bar, Aqua Fun, or room service, which all more or less have the same menu. Lunch can also be had at a nearby hotel, which requires at least a 10 minute walk and could be really hot depending on the weather. I definitely recommend doing some light grocery shopping upon arrival for water, snacks and potential lunch items.

I also wanted to say something about other treatments I've come across online. Honestly, I believe most are crap. 98% of the things I've seen are unproven herbs and creams that people/companies are trying to pull on the hopes of vitiligo patients eager for a quick fix. It really upsets me when I think about people who are trying to scam others online for money. I know there's a lot of this out there and I think the anonymous internet world makes this so much easier to do. There's no sense of feeling bad of scamming someone when you don't interact with them in person (this is a whole other topic by the way). I'm not saying not to try something out, instead I think you should have realistic expectations. There are all these desires (for me, too) to see before and after pictures of skin lacking pigmentation and then after repigmenting. There's something in us that says this isn't right and this isn't the way things should be. But that's the way things are. The truth is that there is no quick fix, no cure and no standardized miracle out there for repigmentation. Easier said than done, but the more we accept this "new normal" and our new selves, embracing something that can make us uniquely compassionate individuals, the more we will begin to truly treat ourselves. It's amazing to experience the power of truly accepting yourself. It's something I'm working on every day. After all, it is truly the inner part of us--and really everyone with or without vitiligo--that needs healing. Let's get to work.