Chlorine in pools and city water
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My first symptoms of irritation started when I moved to Florida in 2013. At first it was just a little irritation after urinating and it felt as if I had constant urinary tract infections, those symptoms soon went away. Then in 2016, we got a pool and I think that my husband was over-chlorinating it. That is when I really started to have bad irritation, dryness, terrible anal fissures, and my vulva was completely white. Those symptoms somewhat subsided when we stopped using the pool, although I still did not even think that it had anything to do with the pool. In 2020, I got Covid and had very severe burning and irritation on my vulva. I looked at it with a mirror and saw that it was white and my clitoris looked as if it were shrinking. I googled the symptoms and saw lichen sclerosus. When I was not sick with covid anymore, I went to the emergency clinic and the doctor examined me and gave me a steroid cream which was very, very irritating. I later found out that the ointment was a better, less irritating option. I ended up going to the gyno a few months later and had a biopsy done, but the steroid ointment had worked so well that it did not show lichen sclerosus on the biopsy. She told me to come back in 6 months and to make sure that I did not use the steroid for 2 weeks prior. She gave me instructions to keep using the ointment. I did continue using the ointment but not steadily. Now about 6 months later, I am having a flare up again. I have a few theories of why I had a flare up. I have been eating a lot of cheese lately, something I rarely do. In fact, the last time I had this terrible flare up when I was sick with covid, I had been eating a lot of cheese. I also found out recently that the city where I live in Florida uses excessive amounts of chlorine and ammonia to treat the water. I did some more researching and found that many people have had serious skin allergies and reactions to the hard water in Florida. So I was also wondering if that is why my symptoms started when I moved here. Anyone here from Florida or any place that has hard water? Another thing that is coincidental, it seems that I have flare ups during allergy season. I sneeze a lot and leak urine when I sneeze. I cannot always run to the bathroom to wash it off, I think it burns me and plays a part in the flare-up.
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