How I manage to live with my rare allergy
Last year I’ve been diagnosed with “Delayed pressure urticaria” which is a recurrent abnormal redness of the skin and often painful swelling after the skin is exposed to sustained pressure such working out, typing, or any kind of activity that involves using your hand even washing dishes or cleaning your home.
So it ruined my life for a while that happened to be associated with high amount of stress and pressure that I went through working with sick people for a while.
After the situation become worse to the point that I started to get neuropathic pain that prevented me from resting my hands on a laptop or typing for a long period of time and as a developer I could loose my job.
Freelancing
Sadly I was working with a group of people who didn’t have receive any love and approval in their early ages so empathy toward others seemed a bit odd and ridiculous performance reviews and pressures started to rise up which led to me quitting my job and start my freelance career.
Managing my own time and working for kind of people I prefer helped me to reduce my stress level and recover from my severe neuropathic pain and hair loss.
Acupuncture & Massage
After I tried different kinds of western medicine and paying a few grand I didn’t get any results for a long period of time.
Someone mentioned to me that I could try Chinese medicine and massage therapy so I gave it a try and it had huge impact compared to other methods so I started to learn how to manage my pain triggers or how to avoid them if possible.
Food & Diet
I started to read a lot of papers and other people experience on this matter and I find out that food and diet could also trigger the pain so I decided to monitor my diet and see when and what types of food triggers my pain or increases it, later I found that every time I consume “Caffeine” and “Pork” my symptoms pop up faster or pain triggers happen a few minutes / hours right after.
So keep an eye on your diet and it might help you to manage this hostile allergy.
Clothing
I only get rashes/swelling in my hands, foot and chest / belly area so choosing high quality and cool fabrics and not wearing shoes or taking them off right after if you work in a office always have some sandals around helps the circulation and it helps to reduce the triggers. This might not be possible for some people who have dress code but you can come up with a solution that fits your life style or at this time that you’re working from home this might not be the case but definitely this helps you to reduce the triggers at least in my case.
Soaking Your Hands in Warm Water
I happened to come across someone who had same kind of allergy and she mentioned that soaking my hands in warm water for a 5–10 or even 15 minutes helps to get rid of the triggers almost instantly, at first I didn’t believe it because I was hopeless as I tried 1000s things but luckily it worked for me so before sleeping I always do it if my pain triggers happen to be at the same time and this helps a lot.
Last words
Recently I learned that there’s a medication called “Omalizumab” which after I read the research helped to resolve medium to severe cases of urticaria but sadly it’s quite expensive and not everyone can afford it I still haven’t got it but hopefully I’m going to and I’m going to get rid of this bizarre allergy for good.
I hope this article helps the people who are dealing with this allergy and make their life easier, keep fighting and keep hustling 💪
