how do I know when pityriasis rosea is healing?

1. LOWER YOUR STRESS LEVELS & Don't Scratch (most important, imo)
2. Aveeno Baby Wash with colloidal oatmeal for showers and baths, using lukewarm water only. Do not take hot showers or baths or the bumps will come out more, aggravate your skin more, or reappear if they tended to be fading.
3. Aveeno Daily Moisturizing Lotion with colloidal oatmeal, which you can mix with Vaseline Intensive Care Vitalizing Gel Body Oil (Coconut Butter * Vitamin E), then mix it together and lather your entire body, head to toe.
4. Get some SUN. Yep, this is probably the BEST method for treating Pityriasis Rosea at home, which is the ONLY method really.
If you can't afford to go to a tanning salon, or just don't want to go to a tanning salon, stand in the sun for at least 10-15 minutes PER DAY with as much of your body exposed as possible. You will want the sun to cover as much of your exposed body as possible. That will bring some relief and it will help the spots to HEAL, which is the point after all.
5. Time -- Give it time to run its course. I used everything from anti-fungal cream, to cortisone cream, to neosporin to rid myself of the painfully itchy rash, but none of that truly worked.
The rash will run the course of 6-12 weeks, and it needs all of that time to heal. When the spots begin to fade, that process may seem to go on for as long as the initial outbreak, but have no fear, those spots will one day disappear.

To let Pityriasis Rosea heal on its own is miserable!! The doctor said it could last for weeks and the thought of that makes me depressed. I just found a website with a treatment and am willing to give anything a try. www.PityriasisRoseaRelief.com

The site http://www.pityriasisrosea.net mentions Oil of olay as a solution but that it generally disappears on its own.

Hello Anonymous-

Boy, is this information hard to find! I suppose because it is a self-limiting problem, the focus seems to be on diagnosis rather than knowing when it is resolving. From what I am reading, it seems the shower is going to bring them out more if it is hot. It also seems that the patches lighten or darken when resolving, so I suppose you could assume that if there are fewer new ones and most of them are lighter or darker than they started, it is resolving. But I'm also seeing that while it tends to last 6-8 weeks, sometimes it lasts much longer. So that is an unfortunate possibility.

If they are really bothering you, a dermatologist might give you steroids to treat them. We have a page: https://www.empowher.com/media/reference/pityriasis-rosea. Here are the links I found, maybe you'll get something from them: http://www.skinsight.com/adult/pityriasisRosea.htm, http://www.aad.org/public/publications/pamphlets/common_pityriasis.html. I also checked the Merck Manual, but it didn't say anything more than these other sites.

I hope you heal soon. Thanks for writing.