Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The blue hands mystery

So, I told you about being tricked into thinking it was the start of Daylight Savings Time when it wasn't, causing me to blow numerous obligations and disappoint multiple people on Sunday morning. I'm still reeling over this weird mistake - who doesn't know what time it is?

But you know what? That was not even the dumbest thing that happened to me that day. Here's what else:

On the way home from Annabelle's game, I grabbed some Dunkin' Donuts iced coffees for the grown-ups and some kind of apple pastry-things for the kids. We were all sitting around the kitchen table enjoying our treats when I suddenly noticed that my hands - particularly my fingers - had turned blue. I must have made some kind of noise about this, because the next thing I knew, Jason and I were both standing up, on high-alert, trying to figure out why my fingers looked dead. I stripped off my shoes and socks: nope, toes were whitish-pink as usual. Jason noted that my lips were a little pale, and we immediately (but silently) started jumping to all kinds of medical conclusions. I was baffled that my hands didn't feel particularly cold or numb or pins-and-needlesey - when you have a major circulatory issue that makes your fingers turn blue, shouldn't you be able to feel something weird going on there?

I sat back down at the table, flexing and rubbing my hands together, trying to get the blood flowing back into the Smurfy digits. Annabelle started to whimper in concern. Jason started Googling and Web-MDing to figure out the possible whys and what to dos. Mad and Nathan kept eating their pastries.

Jason called down the hallway to me: "Try washing your hands!" I agreed that some warm water and rubbing might do the trick, so I got under the faucet and washed with gusto. Sure enough, my fingers looked just about normal again.

My husband returned to the table with a diagnosis: I had Raynaud's Phenomenon, a vascular disease that can cause fingers and/or toes to turn blue in times of cold or stress. I came to terms with my new medical condition quickly, recalling strange pains in my right hand over the last couple of weeks. And, yeah, I certainly had been both stressed and cold that morning - I'd run out without a coat and shivered through the whole Pop Warner game.

It all fit. I started to envision myself in a rubber Raynaud's survivor bracelet ("Live Blue!"), plastering my van with blue ribbon magnets, and leading a talk about overcoming Raynaud's discomfort at the next MOMS Club meeting.

By now, the kids were bored with the whole scene and had migrated to the room with the TV. Clearly, Mom wasn't dying.

Then, my hands got a little wet from my iced coffee cup and I rubbed them on my jeans as I often do to warm them. As I had for an hour straight at the game that morning just before coming home.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Yes, my hands turned blue as I rubbed them on my jeans.

Turns out my hands were not blue from some weird syndrome out of a House episode. It was just the dye rubbing off of my jeans.

And that fifteen-minute escapade was how I out-dumbed the Daylight Savings Debacle.

6 comments:

  1. hahahahaha! this was TOO funny, kelley! i loved that you envisioned wearing a live blue bracelet! LOL

    ReplyDelete
  2. ROFLMBO!!!! Not much else to say! lol!
    nad

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, guys! I am such a goofball. But at least Jason was involved in the hysteria, too.

    By the way, the jeans were newish, but had been washed, dried, and worn at least 3 times before they turned my hands blue. Dodgy!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is hilarious! I've also diagnosed myself with tons of horrible diseases on the internet.

    ReplyDelete
  5. LOVE IT ... hahaha smurfy digits :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. All I can say is, been there. And I thought I was nuts, too.

    ReplyDelete