Until November 1997 bathing with a wash cloth only a part of me at the sink (i.e., my hair or my back, etc.) caused the complex of symptoms listed above. By experiment these symptoms were from getting wet, not a reaction to the soap. (This was proved by experiment. I tried getting wet without soap.)
In October 1997, I saw a doctor whose area of expertise was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I do not have the persistent low grade fever, swollen lymph glands, and over reactive immune system that is characteristic of CFS. I do have some of the same but less definitive symptoms. (See included CFS check list here. He requested lab tests and found intracellular magnesium was very low.
Magnesium Replacement Therapy
In October of 1997 I began Magnesium replacement therapy. It consisted of weekly shots of Magnesium Sulfate solution. I self administered 1 gm., 2 ml., (50%), IM per week, and 2 Slow-Mag tablets per day. This lasted 17 months. This ended in April 1999. The reaction to the MgSO4 was immediate. The symptoms did not go away but they were a lot less bothersome. At the end of the shots we raised the dosage of Slow-Mag 512 mg to 8 tabs /day. In November of 2005 I began another series of Mg2SO4 shots because the symptoms had worsened. The shots had no effect. Currently - April 2013 - I am taking 8 caps per day of Mg/Ca/Zn.
Quality of symptoms
After I started seeing this doctor and started the magnesium replacement therapy the complex of symptoms that resulted from bathing lasted about a day and a half to two days. The improvement quickly plateaued and but the severity of the symptoms has slowly increased till it now takes me 5 days to recover from getting wet.
A measure of improvement
Shortly after beginning the Mg replacement therapy, I washed my torso, front and back in one session. Better than 1/3 of my body. The next day I experienced increased fatigue and muscular pain, my lips were rosy red. I was stiff in my buttocks and inner thighs. The fatigue and rosy lips only lasted a day. The stiffness lasted 3 or 4 days.
I reduced the amount of my body that I washed in one Day and have not noticed the presence of the rose colored lips or of the blue cast to the head of my penis since then. Currently, April 2013, I shower about once a week. I am fatigued for 5 days but the rose colored lips or the blue cast to the head of my penis has not returned.
History of symptoms
This symptom complex is extant before I took any antidepressants. It was not this severe when I first noticed it. The first time I noticed it was an increase in fatigue etc. for about 8 hours. That was in 1971. This symptom has gotten consistently worse over the past 40+ years.
It has not been responsive to antidepressants. It has not been responsive to changes in my strength. In 1974 the fatigue prevented me from managing the 6 or 8 stairs to the front stoop of the building that I was living in. At this time my psychiatrist prescribed Parnate.
When the dosage of Parnate reached 60 mg per day my strength began to improve.This dosage of Parnate gave me enough emotional "lift" so that exercise made me stronger.
Over a period of months I went from being house bound to walking 6 or 7 miles a day.This often included climbing Nob Hill.There was no apparent change in the fatigue caused by bathing.I was probably better able to handle it when I was stronger.
In 2006 I began Lamictal. This made me stronger and made bathing Easier. In July 2007 I could only wash a small part of my body at one time and the fatigue lasted for 3 days.As I wrote above it now takes 5 days to recover. It is very hard to keep clean! I found I could tollerate more extensive bathing but the time to recover is still 5 days. Currently - May 2013 - I am taking a full shower once a week and a bird bath the rest of the week.
Variables
Fatigue etc., from bathing does not respond meaningfully to changes in water temperature from comfortable hot to cold out of the tap temperature.
I normally wash my back using a warm wet towel. I don't use soap when I do this. It is just too much trouble. I still have the fatigue etc. from bathing this part of me. Soap does not appear to be implicated as a source of the problem.
I can do the same physical motions of washing my hair, but without the water and soap. This does not cause me any problems.
I can dampen my hair with a wet wash cloth to facilitate brushing it. This does not cause me any problems.
It's the water? It is my reaction to being wet, not damp. Wet! A person in the Fibromyalgia group I was attending suggested "Aquas Urticaria." I am trying Claritin for this. Jury is out at this time.
Red lines no longer appear on my body. When I did notice them, I usually noticed them on my torso after I bathed. Sometimes they appeared as 3 or 4 parallel finger wide lines on the front sides of my rib cage at and above the nipple line.
Other times the lines appeared as one or more independent thin lines. The thickness of one of these thin lines was about the thickness of the line drawn with a dull number two pencil. I've noticed them usually on my chest and abdomen, my thighs, and around my knees. These are the areas I can see easily. The locations of the red lines were static from incident to incident although they only appeared where I washed. I do not currently notice them.
A dermatologist that I saw in January 1998 called them Dermatographia.
Note: The first test for magnesium level was a serum level test. The rest of the tests over intervening years were done with a sample of cells taken from under the tongue and analyzed by X-Ray fluorescent analysis which measured the intracellular magnesium level. (see the test results for the labs explanation of this test here.
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