In addition to going back to school, I am trying to become a certified Teaching Assistant! My goal is to get some experience working with students in the classroom. I am almost finished with all of the components of the NYS Teaching Assistant certification.
The components of the certification included 3 workshops on bullying and violence in the school, passing a 100 multiple choice question test, and finger print clearance.
Workshops are finished, I passed my test. The final step was finger printing!
Last month, I set out to accomplish this task. I received the official finger print cards in the mail and called my uncle who is NYPD.
It was so helpful to have my uncle finger print me because he knows about my HH. My hands were sweating and I can’t imagine how anxious I would have been had a stranger been finger printing me.
Even so, my prints were not coming out clearly. The sweat on my fingers was making the ink very smudgy and too dark. Although I only needed to send in 2 finger print cards, we printed 5! Hopefully the NYS Department of Education will be able to get some good prints from one of the cards!
I wrote a note about my condition, explaining the prints, and sent it with the cards. My prints might still get kicked back, and I’ll have to do something else for clearance. I’ll let you know what happens!
This is not the first time I have had trouble with finger printing. A while back, I wrote a post about finger printing and digital finger scanning at amusement parks. I feel like sweaty hands really work against us when we need our prints taken! There has to be another way.
Waiting at the station to be finger printed- paper towels in hand to dry my sweat!
Just a Little Sweat 
Hi Caryn,
I’ve been following your blog for awhile now, but just had to respond when I read the one on fingerprinting. I also have palmar hyperhidrosis and had to be fingerprinted a few years ago for my job. I was so worked up about it! I did tell the safety officer taking the prints that I have really sweaty hands and was worried how that would affect the print quality. He seemed to be very understanding, and I think a week of Drysol treatments before the printing helped it go okay. But it is a prime example of the challenges that we with hyperhidrosis face on a daily basis. For me, just knowing that there are others out there with the same condition as me helps a huge amount. I think it’s wonderful that you haven’t let our condition stop you from pursuing your passion as a flautist, and I so admire your courage in being outspoken with others about it. Trying to hide it uses up a lot of emotional energy and only increases the sweating and anxiety. Thank you for sharing your life with us!
Carole
Hi Carole,
Thank you so much for your comment! HH gives us all daily struggle. There are too many challenges to list. Something as simple as getting a required finger printing or taking change back from a cashier gives us problems. I’m happy that I can help by speaking about my experiences and it also helps to hear that you and other readers can relate. We’re all in this together!
Best,
Caryn