Now a pretty girl named Emily Payne is twenty years old and she is studying at the university. Every day, when she leaves the house and goes to class, she takes a huge umbrella with her, even if the sun is shining in the sky and there is not a cloud. Emily has to play it safe, because every drop of rain can be the last in her life
The student has a rare disease, which, according to the International Medical Association, affects no more than 44 people on the entire planet. This ailment consists in an abnormal reaction of the body to a sharp change in temperature, even on a tiny area of the skin.
Doctors call this disease an allergy because of the similarity of symptoms. If, say, a cold raindrop gets on Emily's skin, then the girl is threatened with loss of consciousness, deep and prolonged fainting, Quincke's edema, respiratory arrest and, most likely, death from anaphylactic shock!
As a result, such elementary human pleasures as the opportunity to take a bath, enjoy ice cream, go to the pool or stand in the shower, and even just walk down the street without a life-saving umbrella are inaccessible to Emily Payne and are strictly prohibited.
“I find it hard to believe that a single drop of rain can kill me,” she says. - But I try not to think about this, but simply to fulfill all the conditions that the doctors told me about. It is difficult, but the most difficult thing is to come to terms with the fact that my life will never be full, like other healthy people."
She doesn't even have anyone to share her grief with, counting on understanding, because in the world there are not even fifty patients with the same diagnosis as hers. This ailment is informally called "cold urticaria", and the chance of its development is one in a hundred million. Emily had her first symptoms of an unusual allergy at the age of 13, when she was exercising on the school playground and caught in the cold rain.
In all patients, the reaction to sudden cooling or heating is different, in any case, some suffer more than others. But, in general, the manifestations of cold urticaria are reduced to the fact that a few minutes after exposure to the irritant on the skin, burning and unbearable itching begin, then redness and swelling appear.
According to statistics, in five percent of patients, due to cold or too hot food, fatal swelling of the tongue and larynx can begin. Swimming in cool water can lead to choking and fainting, not to mention headaches and fever.
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Emily experienced this whole scary set on herself at the age of 16. After that incident on the school playground, the doctors could not make the correct diagnosis, writing off all the frightening symptoms to the costs of adolescence and the accompanying hormonal "explosion". But three years later, everything turned out to be much more serious.
Friends persuaded Emily to go with them on vacation to the sea in Bournemouth and, of course, dragged into the water. She immediately lost consciousness and only woke up about an hour later. “None of us could understand what happened,” she recalls. - Then we decided that it was just a deep faint, possibly due to heatstroke. And they did not tell anyone, much less go to the doctor. I didn't know how serious it was."
The next day Emily was joined by her parents and went swimming with her father. Yesterday's events were repeated up to a minute, and here the girl could no longer hide suspicious symptoms from her parents. “Dad was terribly scared. I passed out right in the water, and he had to pull me to the shore, and I showed no signs of life,”recalls Emily. "My whole body was covered with a red rash, and I became like a boiled lobster." The spa doctor immediately suspected that the girl was suffering from some unusual allergy, and sent her to the specialists of the best medical center in the UK.
Now Emily does not go anywhere without a special "rescue" kit. Apart from the already mentioned umbrella, it includes a syringe filled with adrenaline, which the girl carries in her purse, as well as a bracelet with the inscription that in case of loss of consciousness, she should be given an injection and immediately call an ambulance for emergency hospitalization. Of course, it is not without excesses, because Emily is an ordinary twenty-year-old girl, frivolous, subject to sudden changes in mood and impressionable.
“Last February, I got a job as a saleswoman in a bookstore,” she says. - And somehow, being late for the beginning of my shift, I forgot to grab an umbrella. And, of course, according to the law of meanness it started to rain. I did not have time to get to the store before the rain began. I somehow ran to the door, knocked on it, but no one opened it to me, because the store had not yet started working, and the employees entered from the back door.
In general, I fainted right on the steps under the door. Fortunately, some passer-by rushed to help me and read the inscription on my bracelet. This man, whose name I never found out, was not afraid to give me an adrenaline injection, and thanks to him I survived. I woke up already in the hospital."
According to the girl, doctors have not yet agreed on what exactly awaits her in the future. Cold urticaria has not yet been studied to the extent that one can confidently draw conclusions in each case. “Some of the doctors I went to see tried to reassure me - they said that I could still get better: just one day all the symptoms will take and disappear by themselves,” says Emily. - But I try not to think about it at all, so as not to be disappointed later. Better to adapt to the life that is available to me now. And I want to live happily ever after."