Imagine you have a peanut allergy – if you consume any peanut products, you go into anaphylactic shock. 

Now, imagine rubbing peanuts – peanut butter, peanut shavings, peanut shells – all over your arms and hands and skin. I would guess it doesn’t feel great. 

And for those who actually have a peanut allergy, I sympathize with you severely. If I couldn’t eat peanut butter sandwiches, I don’t think I would survive summer. 

However, the sensation you imagine with the peanut allergy scenario is similar to an allergy I have. 

It’s my best description, best explanation of cold urticaria. 

Your hands are frozen, paralyzed with a chill. A cut slices your flesh, just a small one, and, given the numbness, you can’t stop focusing on that one, simple, light incision. 

We’ve all been there, especially on the playground when we were in elementary school. 

I feel this every day, when cool air, water, or surfaces brush my skin for too long. And, to make things even more interesting, every time my flesh comes into contact with the cold, hives kiss my arms and hands and legs with a subtle fury, red and swollen, like a wildfire of ice skittering across the land. 

My fingers swell up like sausages in the cold, the roof of my mouth prickles when I have ice cream, and my cheeks become unbearingly flushed with feeling on a chilly day. 

Even the cool air conditioning of a classroom sets off my skin, and I am afflicted with this desire, this need, to hide my trembling hands from the masses. 

People, peers, and teachers who don’t quite understand the checks and balances of cold urticaria. 

I am allergic to cold. And, yes, it is a real condition. 

When I tell people about my allergy, it’s often with bright amusement and laughter – a unique fact I hold close to my chest. Every reaction is the same. 

Disbelief, then laughter, then reconsideration, then disbelief again. 

And, when I try to explain it to them, to offer to show them even, hives raging in the process, the realization leaves their faces stricken. 

Allergic to the cold – it simply can’t be possible. That’s like being allergic to water, to oxygen: a weird quirk given to a comedic character on a sitcom, a genophobe. 

On the surface, cold urticaria is not the worst. In summer, I barely even register, let alone remember, that it’s a condition I have. So many people don’t even know about it, which allows me to live in ignorance for a handful of humid, hot months. 

However, as soon as the weather drops below 70 degrees, the gloves come out. 

As soon as we get into the thick, frozen slush of December, January, February, March, it’s game over for my skin, red, with a pulse of its own. I’ve had days when I can’t properly grip a pencil in class after lunch on brisk winter days. 

Rain and wind are my greatest adversaries. I can’t swim in the ocean, for fear of anaphylaxis. I can’t jump into the pool, for my heart could stop. I can’t play in the snow or take cold showers or enjoy ice cream without a little kick of annoying pain. 

For those who have peanut allergies or anyone who has a food allergy, you are confined to a single forbidden food. 

For me, the world is forbidden. 

Cold urticaria affects 0.05 percent of people in the U.S., or one in 2000 people, which lends to its rather minuscule “fan base.” In some cases, it is also genetic. People can also have heat urticaria, my cold allergy’s opposite, where they experience the same physical effects when exposed to heat. 

There is also no cure for cold urticaria, only preventive medication – yet, those pretty pills are just general antihistamines. 

Cold urticaria has definitely given me major character development. It has granted my family an odd anxiety, one I sometimes find ridiculous, like every other teenager when their parents shake the pill bottle. 

However, my condition has also given me a new perspective on society. When someone with a peanut allergy is faced with the horrible circumstances of peanut consumption, people understand. We, as a general population, are schooled in the EpiPens and caution around certain food groups. 

But, for me, and anyone else who experiences this allergy to the cold, my anaphylaxis will be greeted with confusion, with laughter, with disbelief, as everyone finally realizes I was serious.