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The Daily Doings of Steph

My poor right foot has had quite the week - sort of a one thing leads to another deal. Sunday, I sprained my ankle and the entire foot swelled. The swelling cut off circulation to my toes. Which led to a very unpleasant flare-up of chillblains on my big toe and middle toe. By yesterday, between the chillblains and the ankle, my foot was very very unhappy.

Until three years ago, when my first chillblain erupted, I thought chillblains were sort of an rural myth - something your grandma warned against but it didn’t actually exist. Well, wrong-o. They exist and they are nasty. Chillblains are the result of poor circulation and cold weather and are similar to vasculitis. They’re yet another charming little off-shoot of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Once you get a chillblain, the affected appendage is very prone to chillblain recurrence. For the past three winters, I’ve had to take very good care of my feet - nothing but smartwool socks, back country boots rated to 40 below zero, and lots of moisturizing foot butter. I did a great job this year - just a very minor flare-up during December and January when our temperatures dropped well below zero. I was quite smug.

However, smugness goeth before fall. By yesterday, my big toe and middle toe felt like raw hamburger sliced and diced by razor blades. Just exquisitely painful. It’s hard to believe that something as small as a toe could cause so much discomfort.

Fortunately, the swelling in my ankle subsided quite a bit last night. And we’re also in midst of a major warm front: as I type it’s 42 degrees. Totally balmy. Normally, I hate Chinooks. But today, my toes are breathing a huge sigh of relief. Ahhh……

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.