Tessa Hansen-Smith has been in the hospital for several days to find a treatment for her condition.
A woman in the United States has opened up about her unique condition called aqueous urticaria, or water allergy.Tessa Hansen-Smith said ABC News She developed allergies when she was 8 years old and it got worse as she got older. Since childhood she played, swam and drank a lot of water, but after the onset of her disease she began to show symptoms. Her skin develops itching, rashes, and hives when she bathes or drinks water. Hansen-Smith shared details about her journey and hospitalization on Instagram.
“When I got out of the shower, I had a big welt on my skin, and after I got out of the shower, my scalp was bleeding,” she said. ABC News.
“So the first thing we did was, ‘Okay, let’s get rid of all the shampoo, conditioner, and soap that we use,'” Hansen-Smith added.
Because drinking water causes a burning sensation in your throat and body, they say you drink milk because the fats, proteins, and sugars in milk help water molecules “slip past” your immune system. .
Her mother, Karen Hansen-Smith, is a doctor who treats many rare diseases, but watching her daughter suffer is heartbreaking.
“As a mom, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get out of the shower to know I’m getting hives, and I feel a little guilty that I realized much earlier that it was a water problem,” she told the magazine.
“It’s heartbreaking. I still have my daughter, but she’s not living the life she wanted,” the doctor said.
Hansen-Smith has an older sister who does not have a water allergy.
The family set up GoFundMe page The amount rose to $8,000 (Rs 6.65 billion) to pay for her recent hospitalization. She expressed gratitude to all of her supporters, allowing her to raise her $10,000 in just three months. This donation will also be used for doctor’s examinations, follow-up monitoring, and physical therapy.
But she also had some tough times. Hansen-Smith said the suspicions of those around her were more distressing than her symptoms.
“When I told people about it in college, they purposely poured water on me and threw ice cubes at me,” she said. ABC News.
But despite her condition, Ms. Hansensmith did well in college. She graduated from Clovis Unified Buchanan High School and then enrolled at the University of California, Davis.
She takes walks, but needs to avoid sweating too much, so she spends much of her day indoors, working on her art, playing with her cats, and reading.
It is estimated that only 100 to 250 people worldwide have aqueous urticaria.
