Well. Let’s hope it’s the light, not a will o’the wisp.
Ever have a moment of Insight when you realize holy sh!t of course that’s IT!???
So I’d made an appointment at the Mayo for 1:15 this afternoon, after calling one of their redoubtable RNs and describing this weird tingling in my hands and on the soles of my feet. It’s been going on for a while and…and…well…tingling hands can be a sign of multiple sclerosis. Years ago, after an episode that was almost certainly an ocular migraine (but has never been proven to be or not to be, one way or the other), an overenthusiastic ophthalmologist told me he thought it could be a symptom of impending MS.
Shee-utt.
This was the same quack who later announced that I had a melanoma inside my eye. This led to about a months’ worth of frantic worrying, rewriting my will, figuring out how my kid would be cared for and on and hysterically on. The ocular oncologist he sent me to took one look, snorted, and said “That’s not cancer! that’s a congenital thing and it’s harmless. Get outta my office!”
So I’m thinking how MUCH, how very much I do NOT want to make that hour-long trek out to the Mayo Clinic and once again explain myself to a skeptical doctor and what’m-i-gunna-do-if-this-is-MS-holy-shit when…yeah…a moth-like thought flutters past:
Hey, stupid…Yeah, you, that one! What have you had your hands in that might have irritated your dainty skin?
Uhm. Well.
Every time I drive around in the car — like, say, trudging out to the dermatologist’s office yesterday and over to the QT Monday buying gasoline — I pull a wet Lysol wipe out of the plastic canister that resides on the passenger seat and scrub down the steering wheel, the gear shift knob, the keys, the this, the that. Monday I wrapped the gas pump handle in wet Lysol wipes and then scrubbed my credit card with another one of them. If I go into a grocery store, I carry a couple of those wipes and wipe off the handle and kiddy seat on the grocery cart. And o’course, every time that happens I get this Lysol disinfectant stuff all over my hands and forearms. And…and…what’s IN that stuff? A fine product called alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride. And what is that, you ask? That is something that the EPA recommends you not use. It causes…yep…contact dermatitis.
Hello? Could it be?
As for the feet? I walk around barefoot on broiling hot pavement two or three times a day. Is there some reason, d’you suppose, that the calluses on the bottom of my paws hurt? Duh!
So I call the Mayo (i really don’t want to traipse out there!!!), reach a nurse and explain my theory. I suggest that even if it is MS or diabetes, I’m not gonna die from it very soon. How’s about we postpone today’s appointment for a week and see what happens?
Amazingly, she thought that made sense! So, ô hallelujah, that little bit of misery is postponed.
July 16, 2020 at 3:29 pm
Hi Vicky,
The symposium you describe could be one of a number of things. Both my brother Michael and I have had them got years, and we were both diagnosed with neuropathies. My hands were diagnosed as carpel tunnel, and I had two operations and was going back for a third, when they did an MRI on my neck and discovered intensive spinal damage. That too, could be the cause of the numbness and tingling, but won’t know for a year after the spine operation… it could still be more carpal tunnel, so… Anyway, you might want to follow through with a more thorough check of your symptoms grow. Hopefully, they won’t and you’ve just put your finger on the problems. But the Mayo Clinic is one of the best diagnostic clinics in the country, so that should be of use if you need them .
Best,
Gail O’Hair Shatsky
July 16, 2020 at 6:13 pm
Hey, Gail! You found your way to Funny about Money! Welcome!
Sorry to hear you and Michael have “enjoyed” some Adventures in Medical Science. Yeah…it looks suspiciously as though a lot of the aches and pains of advanced experience with this world result from the slow crumbling of our infrastructure. 😀 Things could be worse. I guess. They’re great at the Mayo…but in this time of craziness, I hesitate to pester them with some small discomfort here and there that’s not life-threatening and may go away on its own. The tingling’s mildly scary because it, too (like everything else, it seems!) can be a symptom of the Dread Covid Disease…but I imagine there would be other manifestations.
But Occam’s Razor directs us to the simplest explanation…and the simplest explanation IS that I’ve been rubbing Lysol all over my hands. Without washing it off.
July 17, 2020 at 11:36 am
I think coming into direct contact with Lysol on a regular basis would def NOT be a good thing. I carry hand sanitizer with me everywhere and keep some in my car. I think the virus is mostly air borne, that’s why it’s so important to use masks/social distance to lower infection rates.
Our gov finally mandated mask wearing in AR, but it doesn’t officially begin until Monday. How this will actually work, nobody knows, but I think all Hell is about to break loose here. It’s a lousy time to be in law enforcement.
July 17, 2020 at 12:03 pm
Agreed, rubbing your hands and everything you or anyone else touches withLysol is…uhm…less than ideal.
However…it now appears that the cause of the tingling hands and feet is likely pre-diabetes or diabetes. I’ve tested borderline prediabetic in the past, a state that goes away when I lose weight. Just now, like many of us who have spent the past several months sitting on our duffs, I’m about 10 pounds overweight…and my great-grandmother died of Type 2 diabetes. So that explanation has moved up a few notches in the “Likely” department. We’ll find out next week.
Meanwhile, in the public health department: we now can see that countries whose governments installed mask and social distancing laws have pretty well thrown off the contagion, whereas the Wild and Woolly set continue to see rising rates of infection and death. Since our concept of “freedom” is “license to act like fools,” the US falls into the latter category. So IMHO what that means for individual Americans who would like not to sicken and die with a horrid disease is that we each need to wear masks whenever we’re around other people, stay out of public places and away from gatherings, wash every damn thing we bring into the house before putting it away, and sanitize surfaces in the car and on shopping baskets and the like whenever we’re forced to go out.