I am not someone who is usually allergic to things. No peanut allergies except for that one year when I was younger and my doctor performed the prick test on my arms and found out that I could possibly be allergic to almonds which turned out to just being allergic to the change in seasons. I'm okay around dogs and cats, I sneeze like all normal people when the flowers bloom and the weather turns to spring. I'm pretty sure I had some diaper rash (which self-respecting baby didn't?), and I might have had an adverse reaction or two to bath bubbles. They're all chemicals, as my mom likes to say. Speaking of which, how about those dryer sheets?
All of a sudden, one random day around Thanksgiving, an itchy, rashy looking group of bumps appeared on my hands. I felt like a leper. I was scared someone would look at my hands and think, hmm this person better not be spreading some ridiculous itchy bump disease. They were oddly concentrated only on the outside of them, between my knuckles and my wrists. I couldn't think of any reason why they came up. Did I douse my hands in something that spurred some 20 year dormant allergy? Definitely not. Did I eat something that could have specifically decided to cause an allergic reaction on my hands only? Probably not. I eat pretty much everything and not even super spicy Indian food can conquer me.
Perhaps it was those acrylic gloves that I've been wearing for the past 5 years that caused this unsightly set of itchy bumps. And so, I tested it. I rubbed one hand with the acrylic glove for a few minutes, then wore it on that same hand for about 30 minutes. Nothing. Well, not nothing. The itchy bumps were still there, demanding that I desperately scratch my hands until I could find another bottle of cortizone. Cortizone is pretty useless by the way, unless you have a mosquito bite, which I definitely did not have. No, to the acrylic, no to the almonds/other non-existent food allergies. What else? I had to Web-MD it.
Again, no help except that I started to think that I had a form of cancer that began as itchy bumps on your hands. Mind you, this has been several days of flaringly itchy bumps on my hands that didn't seem to die down. The lone acrylic experiment didn't work, Web-MD failed to diagnose me, and I was starting to think I had a unique case of a new hand disease. Benadryl helped sometimes, but I didn't want to be drugged up all day at work and nodding my head in drowsiness.
Finally, I talked to my parents about it. Granted one is a dentist and prides herself on her excellent medical awareness and research abilities, I probably should have talked to them earlier. They boiled it down to soap and feminine lotions that are too much for my delicate sensitive hands or dryer sheets. More experiments underway, including countless loads in the washing machine and new bars of ivory soap. At long last, we figured it out, and I had to part ways with my dryer sheets. The culprit was hiding behind that veneer of a promise to de-static and perfume my clothing. I felt so betrayed!
Dryer sheets and I had gotten along pretty well over the years, especially after I had learned to do my own laundry. However, my skin and my sanity were my priority. The chemical residue reaction that were the itchy bumps on my hand started to fade after each load of laundry sans dryer sheet and I could finally feel relieved. I have been itch-free ever since, minus the one flare up when I wore a friend's sweater that reeked of dryer sheets (of course I noticed this after I was wearing it for a while).
I have looked into alternatives like "natural" dryer sheets and feel a little cautious as to trying them. One wrong step and I could be five ways to Benadryl-Cortizone land. I hope the old washcloth and conditioner remedy works like the housewives say they do. Maybe they've all encountered the same scenario as me, forgot to write about it in Web-MD, and discovered a magical solution. I'm crossing my fingers and praying it comes in a bottle labeled 7th generation or Sun & Earth.
In the meantime, I have sworn off an old friend. Goodbye dryer sheets!
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