Some explanations

Well…first article of the blog, I already don’t know how to start. To be honest, I don’t think anybody is going to read this. I will not share it on my social medias I use frequently because if I was able to talk about my disease to my friends and family I would tell them in real life and not through a blog. However, until now I was not able to talk about my illness without laughing it off or making it seems like it doesn’t affect my life. It’s like a defense mechanism because I hate the idea of people I know and care about worry about me.

So, why am I making this blog then if I don’t think anybody is going to read it? Well, first it is for myself, I am tired of lying to myself and I want to put into words how my life is affected. Secondly, because maybe some persons are in the same situation and can’t find anything online about this condition. Maybe they will stumble upon this blog and see that they are not alone in this, that we are together. Finally, because I might share it on some social medias like Twitter because I don’t have friends IRL on these.

So, I can’t promise I will post often or that my life is interesting. I have no idea what I am going to write about, but I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, if anybody ever read this, let me tell you the main character of this blog: Aquagenic Urticaria

I am 28 years old and I suffer from Aquagenic urticaria since my teenage years. In other words and simply put, I am allergic to water (only on my skin, I can drink water just fine). Before you ask, yes any type of water, be it mineral water, sea water, rain, lake water, tap water, sweat, etc. This condition is very rare, its cause is unknown and it has no treatment or cure. Great, isn’t it? At least, it has a name and it exists, so this is good I guess. Well, it exists but it is so rare that doctors can take years until they believe that you suffer from it.

So what exactly is this weird disease? It means that when water touches my skin, I get itchy red hives on my body. It is hard to describe how it feels but it’s a bit like your skin is burning and itching so hard that you just want to scrap your skin raw to make it stop. If it’s a good day, it will calm down after 30 minutes. On a bad day it can last for hours. And you want to know something funny? Imagine wanting to scratch every part of your body for hours, you can’t concentrate on anything, it hurts so much that you want to cry. Well, tears are made of…water. Which means that crying will only worsen your condition, isn’t that great? For me crying means more pain so I can assure you I am very good in retaining my tears from falling, in any situation.

I don’t know yet what I’m going to write exactly on this blog, if my posts will be long or not but I’ll see how it goes and more importantly if it helps me or not. But I can tell you that I would like to talk more about this condition and how it affects people. Of course, everybody reacts differently but I want to share a bit of my experience in hope that I will stop lying to myself and maybe, who knows, to others.