Mast Cell Disease Awareness Day Thing #4: A (not-so-steamy):guided shower exercise

Spoon eater.

Your friend calls with plans for the night, or you have errands to do, or you've just woken up. Shower, right?

First question: *can* you shower?

Showering involves three triggers (not including undiscovered reactants in bathing products) that some folks with MCD have to be very careful about: vibration/pressure, temperature, and activity.

The physical act of water continually shooting out the shower head and hitting one's skin can be enough pressure to cause trouble. Some people opt for baths or jug showers to avoid this issue. How many minutes would that add to your morning routine if it was the only way you could clean yourself?

The next two aren't that easy to resolve. Some folks are reactive to hot, others to cold, others to both extremes. Temperature-sensitive people have poor thermoregulation and are often swung into one extreme upon exposure to an extreme temperature. Imagine stepping out of your shower only to be so frighteningly cold for 30 to 45 minutes that you shivered too violently to button a top or zip pants. How much time would you need to plan so that you weren't late for work?

The final one, activity, is the most insidious of the three. We don't look at a shower being a workout, but for someone already compromised or triggered by activity all of those movements can quickly add up. What do you do when you go into anaphylaxis while standing on a wet surface with suds getting in your eyes?

I sometimes wonder how I've gotten so slow but then I break things down like this and realize why my pace has changed as my condition has progressed.

For the curious: the shower is indeed a dangerous place for me, as I react to all three. I've jug-bathed or partial-showered or skipped showers altogether; I'm very heat sensitive and have been since I was young and overheat to the point where I'll be pouring sweat and bright red after a lukewarm shower (cold showers over here only!); I am triggered by activity and in the company of two other triggers a shower is a very precarious situation indeed. I have been driven to anaphylaxis before.

...and, despite my desires, I'll have to skip a shower today because I have to go to the store and I can't do both without reacting.