idiopathy

It's almost a week ago today that I suffered through the Challenge Dauphiné. Over the days since that memorable Saturday, my hands slowly lost their numbness, and I started to be able to grab things with force. I was a bit surprised how slow progress was, but reassured by the fact that there was progress. That seemed to stop yesterday, though. In the pinky half of either hand, ants kept running up and down the fingers, as the French would say. I was getting worried.

This afternoon, my labmates who are infinitely more practical than I am suggested I go see a doctor instead of having my hands slowly rot from the inside. I had nothing better to do and made the trek to the emergency room, for the second time in half a year now. By the time I got there, I had worked myself into frenzied anxiety and reproached myself for not going earlier, fearing dire consequences. I was shocked when they just sent me away, coldheartedly. Go see a general practitioner was the advice I got.

This I did. At 3pm, I managed to get an appointment with the first doctor I called for later that very same day. Today is Friday, and evidently not everyone in France slacks.

The doctor I went to was the same that had given me the medical certificate required to enter the Challenge Dauphiné. So he was in a way responsible for my frozen hands. When he saw them, he wasn't very concerned. It will go away eventually, he assured me, but wrote me a referral to some sort of a specialist anyway. He also casually diagnosed me with Raynaud's syndrome, which I have suspected for a long time of being responsible for the tingling and strange discolorations my hands suffer from when it's cold, and gave me a prescription. Five minutes later I entered a pharmacy for the first time in twelve years or so.

This post is not about the pharmacy but about Raynaud's syndrome, a curious affliction that no one really knows the cause of. Doctors call this idiopathic, "a high-flown term to conceal ignorance" according to Stedman's Medical Dictionary. On one end of the treatment scale, go figure, is wearing warm clothes around your extremities. Obvious, but I didn't do this at the Challenge Dauphiné. On the other end is apparently amputation. I try to avoid this by sticking to the middle and taking vasodilatory drugs – and also wearing gloves in bed, just in case.