Avoiding What You Should Be Doing

Today has involved a lot of homework avoidance. I’m in the last stretch of my Masters’, and am pretty much down to doing a dissertation and then I’m done. I’ve submitted the research proposal, have had feedback from the professor, which I have completely ignored for almost a month. I’ve just had too much going lately. I should have spent my day in today sorting it, but avoided it by doing other mundane tasks like dusting, making a loaf of bread in the bread machine, making breadcrumbs with the ends of old loaves, making beef cobbler in the slow cooker (recipe to follow, eventually), playing with Lego (you kind of have to), cleaning the bathroom (true homework avoidance) and defrosting the freezer.

Why am I telling you this? Well, following up on the last post about Raynaud’s, if there be anything in day-to-day life that brings on a nasty Raynaud’s attack, it’s dealing with anything around freezers. The freezer wasn’t totally frosted over, but was getting enough so that every time I pulled the drawers out, I left a trail of frost across the kitchen floor. Time for it to be done.

Yes, I have seen, and defrosted far worse than this in my time too.

Now, I’m not one to go hacking away at the freezer; I’m a firm believer in the "put a pot of boiling water in there and the laws of physics take its course" method of defrosting freezers. So, in theory, I shouldn't have my hands in the ice much. But the problem isn’t the ice, it’s the freaking cold water that’s left after the ice melts! As much as I use another bowl to catch the water, a lot of it has a nasty habit of running right down the back and under the washing up bowl on water catchind duty. So I have to mop it up, and this is what my hand looked like halfway through.

Just looks red and wet to you? Believe me, it bloody hurt!

This is what Raynaud’s looks like just before the fingers turn completely white. And believe me, it bloody well hurts!! I could barely move my fingers just after I took this photo, which made eating lunch a bit of an adventure. And it took HOURS for them to warm up. Glad that I don’t have to do this task too often.

When I defrost the freezer, I put everything in my big camping cool box while I do the job. As it’s connected to the fridge, I have to move of the fridge contents too. And while I was packing the last bits into the cool box, I had a sudden horrible realisation. What the hell was I going to do with the Humira?!

Humira has to be kept between 2-5C. HAS TO. It’s not like insulin which needs to be kept cool, it has to be in the fridge. Period. It can come out of the fridge and warm up to room temperature for a while, but once its warmed up (and you want to before you use it. It’s bloody painful injection anyway, but it is so so much worse when it’s cold!!), you need to be using it soon. What you really can’t do is have it fluctuate in temperature. It’s either cold or it’s about to be used. And it can never be frozen. EVER!! And I have a cool box full of very frozen things. I just had a delivery last week, so between that the one dose I still had, and the delivery, I had £2500 worth of medication that could go very wrong if its kept too long next to anything too cold. Shit.

£2500 of NHS money nestled between smoked ham, tortellini and lemon sorbet

I managed to get around this by doing some creative rearranging in the cool box to try to keep everything fridge-y on one side and everything frozen-y on the other (tried), but it only occurred to me while I was doing this that every other time I had defrosted the freezer since I started on Humira a year ago was just after I used the last one and was waiting for another delivery. Really should have done it last week! #Crohnsproblems. Oh well, they all seem to have survived, anyway.

As an aside, today’s venture into the freezer also found this -

Never seen a breast like that before!

That, my friends, is a chicken breast that has wrapped itself around the wires of the freezer drawer and has frozen solidly into that shape.

Breast too big to fit through small gap. This sounds vaguely familiar . . .

That didn’t make it into the cool box, and will be dinner tomorrow once it has totally thawed, but it took two whole hours at room temperature, and a lot of work with my freezing cold fingers to get it even vaguely defrosted enough to get it unwrapped from that wire so that I could get drawer back in the freezer. That chicken clearly had spirit, but it will still be a cooked and tasty beast no matter how much it resists!

Sorry, I Haven't a Clue!

Work and life have been so insanely busy that I haven't had much time to update this blog. I've tried a few new recipes that I've been meaning to post, but time is not on my side at the moment.

One of my myriad of health issues that I haven't written about is Raynaud's Phenomenon. As February is Raynaud's Awareness Month http://www.raynauds.org.uk/raynauds-awareness-month, I thought I should contribute to the awareness raising thing. What motivated me to get around to it was this -

At least it was only two fingers this time. Sometimes it's all of them!

These were my fingers on cold yesterday. Okay, not even cold. It was 5C. Downright balmy for February for a Canadian. Not only was it 5 degrees, I was wearing not one, but two pairs of gloves. And I was in a heated car. Despite appearances, it isn't frostbite.

Raynaud's Phenomenon (or Raynaud's Syndrome) means that the blood vessels in your fingers and toes over re-act to changes in temperature, especially cold. This means that the blood doesn't circulate properly to your fingers and toes and they turn blue or white. It can be very difficult to get your figures to do what you want them to when they are like this. And when they start to warm up again, it can be rather uncomfortable. In fact, both losing the circulation and regaining the blood supply are bloody painful. This is often known as a "Raynaud's Attack".

Scald on one side, freeze on the other. The British do not have Raynaud's friendly taps!

Raynaud's is one of those things that science doesn't really understand. Although it looks like a problem with your circulatory system, it's got nothing to do with your heart. Occasionally, it's linked to an autoimmune disorder, like Lupus, Scleroderma or Rheumatoid Arthritis, which is known as "secondary Raynaud's"."Primary Raynaud's, where there does not appear to be anything underlying it, is said to be "idiopathic", which is fancy medical-speak for "Sorry, I haven't a clue what's causing it!".

There is no real treatment for Raynaud's, it's really just a matter of trying to prevent attacks by keeping your hands and feet covered and warm as much as possible. There has been some limited success with treating it with a blood pressure medication, but this needs to be weighed up against the side effects and the risks of taking it if you don't actually have problems with your blood pressure.

I couldn't tell you how long I've had Raynaud's, at least a decade I think, as I remember my fingers turning white when I was driving to New Brunswick in August 2003 (yes, I said summer). But I was only diagnosed about 5 years ago after a chance encounter with someone through work who had just been diagnosed and was telling me about her symptoms. I hadn't realised that what was happening to my hands actually meant something. So off to the GP I go, who did a close inspection of my nails (as certain changes in the nails can be an indicator of scleroderma) and ran a pile of blood tests to rule out Lupus. One of those tests, ANA (anti-nuclear antibodies) came back positive, while everything else was negative. My GP described this as "rather curious", but decided it was best to leave well enough alone and call it "idiopathic".

So now I have a reason for why my hands and feet are always cold. I've never been one to walk around in bare feet anyway, and I'm one of those weirdos who needs to wear socks when I sleep as my feet get too cold at night. I have even resigned myself to wearing ugly warm slippers indoors most of the year.

Check out the sexy footwear!

It also explained my habit of sticking my hands between my thighs when I'm sitting with my legs crossed. This may sound strange, but it is actually more socially acceptable than warming your hands up by sticking them under your armpits while in public!



I have always had to keep my hands in my pockets when I am out and I wear gloves outside most of the year. I walk around with several pairs of gloves in my jacket, even in summer. I have five pairs in my coat pockets at the moment. Two pairs are actually liners for others, including these ugly babies -

Just not as nice as my black Victorian lace ones

These are silver-lined gloves, which I got from the Raynaud's Association. They are supposed to be extra warm. I've been trying them out as liners, as they offer zero protection from the wind. I'm not sure that I am sold on them yet, as while they seem to help, I can't decide if it's from the gloves or that I'm wearing a pair of thick polar fleece ones over them. I also find the weave on them uncomfortable and a bit scratchy. I've also been wearing a pair of silk liners in the gloves I wear for driving, which have added a bit more warmth, but the photo at the top shows that they aren't particularly effective.

One of the problems I have in finding gloves is that I have ridiculously small hands (I have the same problem with shoes, I have ridiculously small feet too). It's very hard for me to find gloves that fit, as wearing ones that are too big to leave air pockets at the tips of your fingers, which make your fingers even colder. Options for children's gloves are limited, as most of what is available are mittens or are too thin as they have been made assuming that the child is running around a lot. So I am constantly on the hunt for ones that actually fit.

So why am I not wearing mittens you ask? Have you ever tried to drive a car while wearing mittens? Not only do you look ridiculous, no one makes mittens with no slip palms for driving. As much as using your smartphone with gloves is a pain, it's impossible with mittens. Also, mittens keep you fingers warmer than gloves on the principle that you actually have heat in your fingers to share with the others in the first place, and I don't!!

 
Generally, Raynaud's is more of an (sometimes painful) annoyance in comparison to living with Crohn's or the gyane problems I lived with prior to my hysterectomy. One very strange thing though was that last winter, amongst all of the horrible side effects that I had from the Prednisolone, the only good one I had was that I didn't have a single Raynaud's attack the whole time I was on them. Granted, last winter wasn't particularly cold in the UK, but neither has this winter been and I've been really struggling with attacks the past few months. I've told this to several of my health professionals, including a mate who works in immunology, and they are all rather perplexed by it. But then they shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, it is idiopathic", meaning, "I haven't got an effing clue".