A woman in Florida has opened up about suffering from a rare condition that has forced her to become allergic to her own sweat and tears.
As Julie Reid explained to WFTS, she developed a rare immunological condition called cholinergic urticaria, which causes her skin to become overly sensitive to stress and exercise.
As a result, whenever Reid cries, sweats, or takes a hot shower, she breaks out into painful red hives all over her body.
"It's torture living like this, it's torture," Reid said in an interview with WFTS. "I just feel like a monster now."
Reid first started suffering from the rare condition about three years ago when she was still working at a gymnastics gym.
Because she breaks out into hives so easily now, Reid was forced to quit her job and stop exercising completely.
Since she was diagnosed with cholinergic urticarial, Reid told WFTS that she’s gained tons of weight and can’t even leave the house during the day.
"I went from being a gymnast and a dancer, to not being able to walk through the grocery store, during the day, without receiving hurtful stares," Reid said on her website, where she first opened up about her struggles. "It is just as emotionally painful as it is physically."
According to the National Organization for Rare Diseases, cholinergic urticarial typically comes on spontaneously and doctors can offer little more than antihistamines to keep the condition’s uncomfortable side effects at bay; it can go away just as abruptly, at any time.
"I cannot describe to you the depths of depression that exist when your life is just, taken from you," Reid said on her website. You don't "realize how much your body sweats until you become allergic to it. I would say it's one step shy of being allergic to breathing or blinking!"
