ALLERGIC TO WATER

Imagine not being able to cry because the tears from your eyes cause great pain. Or not being able to sweat without breaking out in a rash, and, if you do get sweaty, not being able to shower. You can’t afford to let any water touch your body because when you do so, it feels like your skin is burning. Yes! Some people are allergic to water. 

This condition – of water allergy – is called aquagenic urticaria, and the defining symptom is a painful skin reaction resulting from contact with water. According to this Wikipedia entry, aquagenic urticaria causes the skin to itch extremely and occasionally burn after being exposed to water of any kind. The skin may develop hives or spots. Showers may result in severely dry eyes and soreness. Higher water temperature tends to expedite the formation of hives. Shortness of breath or swelling in the throat can occur when drinking water. The pain usually persists for between 10–120 minutes.  

It is an extremely rare condition; there are only a few dozen cases known to exist. But it is definitely real, as this young lady from Melbourne, Australia can attest.

Ashleigh Morris is allergic to water of any temperature, a condition she's lived with since she was 14 – she’s 24 years old now. When Ashleigh gets wet, her body explodes in sore itchy red lumps that take about two hours to ease. She has to wash, but showering is a painful experience and she can only do it for a minute at a time.

According to this daily mail article, these brief showers are the only contact Ashleigh has with water. The one thing she doesn't miss is the washing up. The rash Ashleigh gets after coming into contact with water is more painful than it looks. Most of us take showering for granted but for Ashleigh it's a painful endurance that often reduces her to tears.

 

"I can't go anywhere for about two hours afterwards because it's so severe”, she said. "There's been many occasions where I've been so itchy, I've made myself bleed from scratching...After a shower I stay at home until it goes away, that frees me of the burden of having to explain." 

She developed the condition ten years ago after an acute case of tonsillitis. She was prescribed a heavy dose of penicillin that rid her of the tonsillitis but left her with another problem. The penicillin had altered the histamine levels in her body and caused the aquagenic urticaria to occur.  

"I was in disbelief for a while, but I soon realised how serious it was. I cried for a few hours, then picked myself up, and kept going. I realised it was something I had to live with," she says.

So Ashleigh found ways to avoid water. She stopped doing sports and anything that made her sweat. She makes sure she stays in air-conditioned places and always has an umbrella in her car. 

As mentioned earlier, this condition is rare and it is said to affect one in 230 million people worldwide. According to Daily Mail, only around 30-40 people worldwide are thought to have been diagnosed with the condition, which was first described in 1964. Miss Dutton of Walsall, England is another one of such people.

As reported by UK’s Daily Mail in 2009, Michaela Dutton, unlike most mothers, doesn’t run to wipe away her young son’s tears when he falls over and hurts his knee. That’s because even a drop of water can trigger a painful burning rash on her skin. 

The birth of her son Mitchell – now 7 years old – triggered the allergy in her, leaving her unable to touch or drink water. She was also unable to hold her son for more than a few minutes in case he sweats on her. She cannot drink tea, coffee or fruit juice because they make her throat blister and swell up. Instead she survives on copious amounts of Diet Coke, which her body tolerates, even though it contains carbonated water. To keep herself clean, she jumps into the shower for ten seconds once a week. 

Medical opinion is divided but the condition is thought to be caused by the release of histamine – the same substance which makes insect bites painful and itchy – in sufferers’ skin cells. There is no cure and no successful treatment for this condition. Antihistamine drugs or steroids may provide some relief for the itching caused by the welts, but will not cure aquagenic urticaria.

Even the experts seem a little vague about aquagenic urticaria. Dermatologists agree there's an association with elevated blood histamine levels, but there are other processes at work since antihistamine drugs often provide no relief at all.