By the time she’s done, my palms are black and blue and look like a pincushion, with neat little rows of red dots. After the bruising fades, my hands become slightly weak, a side effect I accept in exchange for the joy of liking my hands.

Unfortunately, the effects of Botox wear off over time, so I have to undergo this treatment several times a year. If I don’t get it done in time, I again face the shame of sweaty hands.

Somewhere between 1 percent and 3 percent of the population has palmar hyperhidrosis, so I’m not alone. It’s a physical problem that often has an inextricable emotional component: When my hands sweat, my anxiety increases; when my anxiety is high, my hands sweat.

Ingrained in our society is the belief that the handshake is sacred. My parents taught my sisters and me that a handshake should be strong, in order to convey strength of character. Mine was weak and soggy, and I hated what that conveyed.

The prospect of shaking hands with someone fills me with dread, a first impression gone wrong, the outing of an ugly secret I don’t want to share. It’s agonizing to watch as people flinch at your touch, draw back and wipe their palms on their pants legs.

Even with Botox treatments, I detest shaking hands. And I know that those of us with sweaty hands are not the only ones who hate it. My grandmother had arthritis, and a firm handshake could bring her to tears. My best friend, a compulsive nail-biter, describes the “convoluted curl” she does to hide her fingers from public view; offering her hand in greeting is the last thing she wants to do. And when actor Kumail Nanjiani tweeted recently, “I can’t imagine ever shaking another hand,” the tweet got 50,000 likes in a matter of hours.

So now that we know shaking hands contributes to the spread of deadly germs, can we all just agree to eradicate this preposterous custom? What were we thinking, anyhow, when we took a stranger’s hand in ours, fingers that may have pried a piece of food from a tooth or were used to scratch an itch or wipe a nose? Why mark the occasion of making a new acquaintance by handing the poor sucker norovirus, E. coli or salmonella — let alone coronavirus?