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At least a few people are aware of this right now. I have had issues with my hands for years. When I say this, I'm referring to something that started a few years ago, but there's really a problem that started before then. First of all, I'd like to get what I mentioned first out of the way. In my profile on some websites, I put down that I have "Cutaneous Adherence Syndrome". Unless I've told you about it before, I'd assume you'd never heard of it. It's a condition that causes one's skin on a specific part of their body to always feel sticky, no matter what. If you encounter someone with the condition, you're not really going to know unless they tell you. In my case, what always feels sticky is my hands.
I remember this started the day after Thanksgiving in 2015. To make things worse, I had another issue back then. My hands were always sweating too. Hyperhidrosis is another annoying condition. Palmar Hyperhidrosis is where someone has to deal with excessive sweating in their hands. The first day with this, I thought it would go away after washing my hands. It didn't. I then thought if I waited I day, I'd be fine. I wasn't. Then, I thought maybe it had to do with the Christmas decorations we set up that day. Perhaps my hands were reacting to something we had? But after putting everything away, nothing really changed. I went a good while without mentioning this to anybody, but it really started to get on my nerves. The sweating would eventually come less frequently. Now I just have to deal with my hands always feeling sticky. I've tried different things to treat it, some of which pretty stupid like burning my hands in hot water. Sometimes you just get to a point where you're so desperate you'd try just about anything, no matter how dumb it sounds. I eventually started seeing a dermatologist and was able to learn a bit more, like the fact that I was one of only TWO cases the guy had seen in THIRTY years. That's when it really sunk in how rare this condition is. He recommended a product for me to try, but I eventually quit using it due to it not working. I've found other things that help make it easier for me to do stuff over the years. I've got lotion meant for palmar hyperhidrosis, that I don't really have anymore. However, it does help slightly with Cutaneous Adherence Syndrome, so I've been using it. Unfortunately, there's no real cure for what I've got so I worry that I'll have to spend the rest of my life with it. All I can do is find different ways to treat it, but I won't lie, it really makes it hard to get by sometimes. I'm surprised I even made it through school with this condition. One of the biggest things this condition did to me was affect my hobbies. People that have known me for a while know I'm a gamer. I've always loved video games. However, having this condition made it harder to play them and before I knew it, I couldn't really play a lot of the games I wanted to play. I wouldn't touch most genres. All I could really play were visual novels since I didn't really have to touch a whole lot. During this time, there was lot of Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Hotel Dusk, and I got to play some really good visual novels on PC like Katawa Shoujo and Lucid9. After I got the lotion, I started trying more, but it still wasn't quite enough, but I could handle more keyboard and mouse games at least. So I was able to enjoy Sonic Mania for a while. One day, my dad came home with a package of gloves so I started wearing them and they have made it so much easier to do stuff. If I never got them I wouldn't be able to play a lot of the stuff I've been playing. Thanks to these, I was able to play my first Persona game (Persona 3 Portable) and currently I'm able to play one of the best free to play games I've ever played (Genshin Impact). It's annoying I've gotta wear gloves to enjoy this hobby of mine though. At the very least, I don't have to deal with the sweaty palm issue we've all had when playing games anymore. My hands hadn't really improved by they were fine enough to do things for most of this year, but that all changed around August. But before I get to that, I've gotta go further into my past. I don't talk about it a whole lot but I've got OCD to some extent. I tend to wash my hands frequently. When I think about how I used to never wash them when I was a kid, I feel pretty disgusted with myself. How did I live like that? However, they're have been a lot of things that make me feel like I have to wash my hands afterwards which get me awkward looks from people at home. They often question why I'm washing. At times, they complain about me taking too long. The thing is though, any guide will say you need twenty seconds or so but if I take more than five, I'm told I'm taking too long. The big problem isn't how things make me feel like I need to wash my hands, it's what it takes to get them to feel clean. For a while, there wasn't anything weird. Just once and I was good. When I got to high school, it changed from once to twice. During this time, I was still told I took too long and also told I used too much soap, which got me into trouble on more than one occasion. I was told I was using too much liquid soap, so my mom made me switch to bars of soap and then I was told I was going through those too quickly and then it was back to the liquid soap. For a while, I've felt that if I don't wash my hands long enough or use enough soap, they just won't feel clean. My parents would just tell me I'm being a ridiculous, but as long as my hands are being like this, there isn't really anything I can do about it. They don't really have the problems I have, so of course they wouldn't understand. They (particularly my mother) make fun of my OCD and it's really hurtful if I'm honest. However, if I tell them that, they're not really going to listen. Anyways, the problem that began in August of 2020. One day, my hands just wouldn't feel clean no matter how many times I washed them. It didn't matter how long, how much soap I used, or how many times. My hands just continue to feel like they aren't even clean. I'll be doing something, and then that feeling will come up. I'll know I've washed but my hands are telling me they aren't clean so I just go and end up washing them again only for the cycle to repeat. Honestly, it's driving me insane. My parents complain about me going through too much soap and stuff, but they fail to see that this is hard on me too. It's not like I want to be like this. I don't like using too much soap. I don't like feeling like I have to wash so many goddamn times. I hate having hands that are so damn sensitive. I thought maybe I might have forgotten how to wash so I looked it up and I'm not really doing it any different from what the hand-washing guides say. Despite that, my hands keep not feeling clean and I just end up tiring my arms out. I did some research on this too, and from what I've found, it seems it's just a part of OCD so now I'm worried that this is just something I'll have to live with too. It's just gotten to a point where I don't know what to do about my hands. If I didn't need them, I'd cut them off. Okay, that's a bit extreme, but still, you should get the idea. I worried about them. I hate them. I don't know what to do with them. It's annoying. My hands just piss me off. Well, that's all I really have to say about them. Just felt like I had to get all this out there. I hope this won't last like my Cutaneous Adherence Syndrome.
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