Frost on my car window this morning. Even frost looks better to me when you add sunshine.
There’s an old Scandinavian saying that goes, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”. No. Just no. Cold weather is bad weather. If I believed in hell, I think that it would be cold, not hot.
Oh yes, I have tis conversation every morning. When I’m in bed, I’m warm. Therefore, I spend a lot of time in bed in the wintertime. Today it was sunny and the high was around 40 degrees Farenheit. It felt like a heat wave!
I’ve had Raynaud’s disease for years. Raynaud’s affects the blood vessels in the fingers and toes. It’s characterized by episodic spasms, called vasospastic attacks, which cause the small blood vessels in the fingers and toes to constrict in response to temperature extremes. With Raynaud’s, the skin on the affected areas becomes white or bluish and cold or numb. Unfortunately, even when I’m no longer in the cold, the painful spasms continue. So cold isn’t just cold for me, it’s painful.
They are working on better treatments for Raynaud’s disease. A few winters ago it was so bad that I developed ulcerations on some of my toes. My doctor recommended that I take
sildenafil, better known as Viagra. Hey, it’s a vasodilator. I opted not to take it though. It has to be taken every 4 hours (insert joke here)and I’m not a big fan of taking pills as it is. Also, it’s expensive. Apparently, my insurance company didn’t care if my toes fell off, but they’re okay in making sure 80 year-old men in the nursing home can still get an erection. Priorities!
What I’ve found that does help: regular exercise and upping my intake of vitamin D. I’ve recently read a few medical journal articles that tout the benefits of fish oil for Raynaud’s suffers, so I’ll give it a try. I love suggestions like “stay warm”. Hey, I’d love to do that, but it’s an impossibility when the windchill is sub-zero. Remind me again why I live here? 😉
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