Living with hyperhidrosis is lonely and sad

Just imagine. The weather is cool and you are in the comfort of your home or a familiar place, either by yourself, with your friends or family. You aren’t nervous or anxious.

Yet, you are seemingly sweating from places on your body like your hands or your feet. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Because of that, you grow self-conscious. You find yourself not willing to touch someone just because your hands just feel damp and sticky most if not all the time. You are afraid of people giving you that questioning look. So you don’t shake hands. Under certain situation, your hands are dripping.

And anything you touch with your hands, you leave behind a trail of sweat droplets. If you don’t wipe them away in time, when those droplets dry up, they leave behind white and yellow stain. Writing on paper causes the ink to smudge, paper become wet, soaking through. And whatever you grip, you feel like there are times it’s slipping away.

But that’s not it.

Your feet sweat just as badly as well. After a long day of wearing covered shoes, your feet stinks from all that sweating. And when you walk bare feet, you leave behind a trail of footprints. If someone else were to walk the same path as you, they will wonder why is the floor so sticky. Sometimes, because your feet are so wet, you feel like you could slip and fall.

A quick google reveal the name of this condition: Hyperhidrosis. So you wonder why it has happen to you. What have you done wrong to deserve this?

Well, it’s not your fault. The sad reality is that you won. You won the genetic lottery that causes the nerves that control sweating to be hyperactive. To those system, it’s like you’re constantly overheating.

Here’s the kicker.

If you are overweight in anyway, then, your body will feel like it’s overheating even more because it has to carry around those lumps of fats in your body when you do move physically. So now, you are sweating all over, instead of just limited to your hands and feet for the wrong reason.

It won’t be so bad if there’s a cure for it.

But because hyperhidrosis isn’t a life threatening condition, the medical industry didn’t spend too much resources on finding the cure to it. There are of course treatments available but they aren’t ideal or foolproof.

One could try prescription-grade anti-perspirant but it doesn’t really work well on the palms or feet because of the thickness of skin in those areas and the amount of sweat glands. The use of iontophoresis is time-consuming and expensive and may not even give you the best result. Botox injection is effective but painful, time-consuming and expensive. Oral medication comes with excessive side-effect that doesn’t improve your quality of life. You are simply trading sweating for dry mouth, kidney issues, etc. The final and more drastic treatment is the Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy. It is a surgical option that comes with the risk of compensatory sweating and may stop your body from sweating properly from the chest and up. As with any surgery, there are other risks involve.

This is why I feel miserable at times. The excessive sweating prevents me from living the kind of life that I desire. Medical treatments will tie me down financially, limiting my options. I mean who doesn’t want the autonomy associated with zero debt. You are free to do whatever you want for as long as you got enough money in your bank. Without treatment, well, life sucks too. A five minutes walk will leave me drenched in sweat. I dare not enter into any relationship because of the condition. If anyone were to hug me, their body heat will cause me to feel like I’m heating up and I will sweat excessively. Meeting new people make me nervous and I sweat even more. If anyone were to hold my hands, they will probably recoil from those clammy, wet hands.

So…It’s a lonely and sad life.