I’m 17 and I love to ski. Only I can’t, because every time I go out in the cold my fingers and toes turn purple and hurt like crazy. I have Raynaud’s disease, a vascular disorder that makes the arteries in my extremities (all those fingers and toes) spasm when exposed to cold temperatures or extreme stress. Worst case scenario, I could lose a digit if I didn’t get warmed up in time, but that’s a very rare occurrence for the 5 percent of the population who have Raynaud’s.
I haven't had the symptoms of Raynaud’s disease my whole life. Last winter I began to experience severe pain in my toes. At first I thought it was just because I had been on my feet more. Come on now, a new job waiting tables after school is bound to make for some sore feet, right? But the pain just got worse and worse, and even nightly foot rubs couldn’t help my poor puppies. I tried swapping out my Converse Allstars for some shoes with more arch support... yuck (I'm not 80, you know). But even that provided me with zero appeasement. The pain eventually grew so bad that I could barely walk, and finally I wised up and visited a podiatrist. As you can probably guess (drumroll, please), I was diagnosed with Raynaud's.
The doctor didn’t have any cures, just last-resort blood pressure meds. Let me repeat: I’m 17. I exercise regularly and I eat well; my weight is normal; NO WAY am I going on blood pressure meds. So he told me how to just live with it…basically, by staying warm. I'm not exactly one for just living with it, so here's where the blog comes in. I want to cure, or at the very least alleviate my Raynaud's, as well as provide the community with information on the phenonmonon.
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