Meet Your Guide: Joni Kazantzis

As the new Bezzy Psoriasis community guide, Joni hopes to provide resources and empathetic support to others navigating life with psoriasis.

One day when Joni was 15 years old, she woke and realized that she was covered in what she believed were hives.

“It was on my legs, my arms, my stomach, my back — everywhere was covered. As you can imagine, at that age, it was like the worst thing on the planet,” Joni remembers.

“I grew up with a lot of allergies, to food and to things blooming outside. Because of this, I originally thought it was an allergic reaction,” she continues.

But when her doctor examined her, he didn’t think it was an allergic reaction. So he sent her to a dermatologist, who ultimately gave her a diagnosis of psoriasis.

Join the free Psoriasis community!

Connect with thousands of members and find support through daily live chats, curated resources, and one-to-one messaging.

Sign up

Finding treatments that worked

Joni was somewhat familiar with psoriasis because her grandmother had lived with the health condition, though her case was very mild in comparison to what Joni was seeing on her own skin.

“Her case was so mild that she would put lotion on it and it would go away,” Joni says. “So I struggled a bit at first understanding that psoriasis would be with me my whole life.”

“I felt very alone,” she remembers. “The internet wasn’t what it is now — there were AOL chat rooms but I was young and I wasn’t allowed in them. Even though my grandmother had it, she was also in her 70s and we lived very different lives from each other. It was hard to not have anybody around me who could understand.”

It was especially difficult because, like many people living with psoriasis, there was a lot of trial and error in learning to manage her symptoms, too.

“Through the years — I’m 40 now — I’ve been through pretty much all of the types of treatment you can possibly have,” Joni says. She tried everything from steroid treatments to topical products to phototherapy.

During that time, some medications helped for a little while or even made her psoriasis go into remission temporarily. But psoriasis has no cure. It has been — and will continue to be — something she manages every day.

Turning to help others

Over the years, Joni has gotten better at understanding her triggers and how psoriasis affects her body. She’s found ways to alter her day-to-day lifestyle to better manage her psoriasis symptoms. She’s also connected with other people living with psoriasis and has become more involved with patient advocacy.

“When I was diagnosed, I was given a pamphlet with a bunch of words in it that I didn’t really understand,” she says. She started detailing her experience with psoriasis, and later, “got involved with the National Psoriasis Foundation to connect with people sharing similar experiences.”

More recently, Bezzy approached her to be the Bezzy Psoriasis community guide, an opportunity she was delighted to take on.

Creating a community

“I love that we’re creating this place, a safe space where people can come and talk about [psoriasis] because there is so much stigma and so many misconceptions involved with this disease,” she says.

“[Psoriasis] is such a visible thing, and it can be difficult to talk about it with people who don’t understand what you’re going through,” she continues. “This kind of space allows for people living with psoriasis to talk about their experiences and share tips — like what makeup should I wear? What should I eat?”

Joni is excited to help people navigate their own experiences living with psoriasis through her role as the community guide.

“Psoriasis can make you feel really alone when you’re not feeling well and you’re not looking your best or feeling your best. It can be isolating to people,” she says. “So having that community around you and that understanding is just so important. It creates that connection that people need.”

“I want us to be that resource and that friend for someone, where you can say ‘Yeah, this sucks’ but here are some things we tried that helped us live with it, rather than against it,” she adds.

Joni hopes that Bezzy Psoriasis can be a sounding board to support people when their patience is wearing thin. Psoriasis can be a frustrating condition to navigate because it can take a lot of trial and error to find out what works best for you.

“Your journey is not going to be exactly like anybody else’s, but no matter what, this community is here to support you.”