Author: HQH
Released: May 19, 2001
Updated: September 9, 2004
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I had hyperhidrosis since 8th grade in 1995 when I discovered that I started to sweat abnormally. It could've happened prior to 8th
grade, but it was very noticeable then. I can't remember much back then, but I do remember this: During my science class, the last
class for the day, the room would usually be cool. That's great. Sometimes, I would walk in and feel hot or warm from P.E. (Physical
Education) class from time to time. And the thing is that I had P.E. before lunch time, and lunch time should've cooled me down. But
I guess not, the heat still kept with me I guess. Every time I had science class, I would sit down in that cool room with a buddy
of mine - John, sitting next to me (we had a big table that could fit two students per table) and I would usually run my warm sweaty
hands down the black top table and there would be a good chunk of sweat streaking across the table as I drag my hand to smear all
the sweat off of my hands. I also would just stamp my whole hand onto the table and then lift it up and see my hand print in sweat
on the table. I could see how much sweat my hands produced. Did this numerous times with my friend and he would do the same with his
hands too. But the problem is that his hands produced far less than what my hands can produce! My hands produced like ten times
(maybe I'm exaggerating, but you get the point) the amount that he can produce on the table. This was insane!
As time moved on, the condition got worse and I kept on wiping my hands on that black top table in science class every chance I
got to cool down my hands (the room was cool, and so was the table). The problem wasn't just limited to science class. It was pretty
much every other time as well. But this was when I remembered when I started to notice hyperhidrosis in action. Pretty much middle
school ended. Now for high school. Something that's going to be a bigger problem.
During high school, the problem got so much worse, that when I took notes, the papers would sometimes curl up or even have
abundance of wet-dryness bumps on the paper. For what I mean, if you were to wet your fingers with water and flick them at a piece
paper, you'll see that once the water droplets on the paper dries up, the paper inhibits the dryness affect and causes the paper to
retard in some way that you would never get the paper back to the smoothness it began out as. The once wet spots now dried are now
kind of hard and curled in some way. Even at times, writing with little sweat at the edge of my right hand's palm would cause the
right side of the paper's edge to curl upwards and I would sometimes have to hold down the edge to be able to write. Very annoying.
I would remember that there was this one incident that in my senior year of high school, in Physics class, we were doing some
projects, and one group just had to do some cheerleading stuff. That was okay, but when it got to the experiment, we had to go to
the gym to do some cheerleading stance. Well, I hope I don't have to be one of the people who have to do it... I was wrong. I was
chosen to be one of the people, but out of the three in my group, I was the lightest one, so I get to be on the top of the two, and
the other two guys get to hold me up. Of course, I wasn't afraid of 5 to 6 feet in the air held by two guys, but when I had to get
down, I would remember my teacher standing there - Ms. Sweet (Physics teacher) and a classmate that headed the cheerleading project
- Jennifer (a cheerleader as well). When I was suppose to get down, and suppose to give my hands out to Jennifer to get me down
safely, I said, "No, I can get down by myself." After I said that (or something like that), my teacher said, "Ti [my nickname] is
afraid of girl cooties." Har har har. Very funny. Little did they know that my hands were sweating at the time. That's why I chosen
to get down by myself. I would've loved to jump into Jennifer's arms just for the fun of it, but no, I'd have to restrain myself
and get down from myself. No way am I extending my sweaty hands for her to feel. Too embarrassed to do so.
There were many times that my hands were so sweaty, yet, I was able to conceal it from everybody in my high school. I can safely
say that no one knew my special sweating ability, even one of my friends that I usually hung out with. Of course, after high school
was over, I told him about it, and he was surprised. I am so amazing to cover up the fact that I had super human powers to sweat
like crazy and not one person was able to notice it.
Hyperhidrosis is a very good reason why I did not attempt to make a lot of friends nor did I get involved with them and go do
whatever they liked to do when they hung out. So poor little me had to stay all at home. I didn't get out much of the house either.
That really sucked. I was definitely not happy about this sweating ability, as it wasn't any useful for me. There are many other
incidents that I can talk about, but you'd get the point and can conclude that hyperhidrosis damaged my social life and everything
else in its way. I can't shake hands, meet new people, congregate with people, do anything that requires using my hands basically.
All these things aren't really possible for me. I would feel quite embarrassed, because my hands sweat like 24/7.
As my hands keep sweating more and uncontrollable over the time, I was alienated from people and was quite distracted and angry
whenever I had to use my hands to do some tasks. The only thing that became my best friend was a computer. That's right, a computer.
The computer doesn't care if I had sweaty hands, because the keyboard and mouse would be all right, and I would just wipe it dry and
the computer won't complain. It also doesn't know that I have sweaty hands, and it won't ask me why. Hyperhidrosis only brought me
closer to computers and that's why I'm so much into computers. I spend a lot of time on computers because of this.
Fight For Cure
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