A woman in the US has spoken out about her rare condition, known as Aquagenic Urticaria or water allergy. Tessa Hansen-Smith claimed that her allergy started when she was 8 years old and got worse over time. When she was younger, she played, went swimming, and drank a lot of water, but as the sickness took hold, she began to have symptoms. Her skin becomes itchy, rashes, and hives when she bathes or drinks water. More information on the travel and hospitalizations was posted on Instagram by Ms. Hansen-Smith.
“So, the first things we kind of did was, ‘OK, let’s take away your shampoos, take away your conditioner, take away any soaps you’re using’,” Ms. Hansen-Smith added.
The 25-year-old claims that drinking milk helps the water molecules “sneak past” her immune system because the fats, proteins, and sugars in milk prevent the water molecules from hurting her throat and body when she consumes water.
Even though her mother, Karen Hansen-Smith, a doctor who has encountered numerous uncommon diseases, finds it very difficult to witness her own daughter suffer.
As a mother, “I feel a little bad for not noticing when she would get out of the shower that she had hives and realizing it was a water issue way earlier,” she told.
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“It breaks my heart. She is still with me. However, she is not leading the life she had hoped to,” the doctor noted.
The older sister of Ms. Hansen-Smith does not suffer from a water allergy.
The cost of her most recent hospital stay, which increased to $8,000 (Rs 6.65 lakh), has been collected by the family through a GoFundMe page. She has expressed her gratitude to all of her fans for helping them raise $10,000 in just three months. This money will help her pay for doctor visits, follow-up care, and physical therapy.
But she has experienced difficult times. The skepticism of those close to Ms. Hansen-Smith, she claimed, was more agonizing than her illness.
When she did discuss it with others in college, they would purposefully try to splash water on her or throw ice cubes at her, she recalled. Ms. Hansen-Smith did well in college despite her illness. After Buchanan High School in Clovis Unified, she enrolled at UC Davis.
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She goes on walks, but because she has to keep from overheating, she spends much of her time indoors creating art, playing with her cats, and reading.
Only 100 to 250 people are thought to have aquagenic urticaria worldwide.
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