guess what i'm allergic to...(personal)

Water...H2O...agua...maima...wai...wakka...yes, water!!! Can you even believe it? Do you think I'm making this up?! Sounds like something more from a great SNL skit than to be my own diagnosis! After many months of severe itching, I finally went to the dermatologist. I would get out of the shower, and my arms, upper back, and legs would just start to itch, like a thousand fire ants were crawling all over me. We came up with thousands of reasons of why this must be happening: hard water/soft water/different detergent/different fabric softener/different soap, but nothing was changing and nothing was to blame! Then this summer with endless days at the beach and lots of days at Schlitterbahn, I started to think that it just had to have something to do with the water itself. And the dermatologist shook her head and nodded yes, yes, yes as I described my daily struggle with this. Then she says, "You have Aquagenic Pruritus." Say what? Which then she explained is the formal name for being allergic to water! After being in shock, I was just so glad that she had a diagnosis and a name for what I was going through. With this allergy, you don't see a visible reaction, so it gets a little tricky to explain to people why you are scratching uncontrollably. Anyhow, life will go on...with showers, I promise! I will probably think twice about soaking in the beach for hours upon end or ever taking a long bath, for that matter! But after googling my new found term, I'm thankful once again that although this is a chronic and basically untreatable skin disease, it's not life-threatening!

Back in the day...before this monster took over my skin...

My Dad and me at 5 months old...

Me at 4 years old...

And me now...

Yeah, right!!!