Raynaud's or Get Out the Mittens a.k.a. Me As a Three-Legged Dog

So, I can feel the soreness seeping back into my body. I'm down to 5mg daily of Prednisone as of yesterday. My hands were somewhat stiff when I woke up this morning, and I'm aching more overall. Having said that, things aren't as bad as there were at the beginning, so that's good! I'll be interested to see how the Methotrexate and Enbrel are doing on their own when I drop the Prednisone completely next Thursday...

In the meantime, another interesting twist in the RA saga. I've developed what I'm pretty sure is Raynaud's syndrome or disease (haven't been diagnosed yet, so don't quote me!). Last night I went out for dinner with a friend. Before leaving I went to the washroom, washed my hands with cold water (no hot water on tap for some reason), then left. It was cold out, and my car was cold, but it didn't take that long to get home. Still, I was cold and left my gloves on till I got to my apartment, and when I took my gloves off, multiple fingers (not all) had that corpse-like look (in Raynaud's, small arteries in places like your fingers narrow, constricting blood flow).

I've had Raynaud's before (medication-induced by beta-blockers I was on for migraine prophylaxis), so I'm pretty sure that's what was going on, but I'm not happy about it. It's potentially dangerous, and I seriously don't need more crap on top of everything else, but what do you do? Deal, cause what else are you going to do?

I was telling my friend last night that I have a sort of mantra or theory or policy or whatever you want to call it (feeling a bit brain dead right now as it's the end of the week). It's my three-legged dog theory. A dog that loses a leg doesn't freak out about the fact that it's lost a leg – it doesn't know any better. It just starts hopping around on three legs. So that's what I'm trying to do really: hop around and not focus on what's been lost...

P.S. I should have taken a picture of my hands last night (or hand – hard to take a pic of two hands with an iPhone unless someone else is doing it!). Next time the Raynaud's thing happens, I will so anyone who doesn't know what it looks like can see!

P.P.S. Settling in to watch the Olympics. I am a total Olympics freak – once I start, I cannot stop! I will watch anything and everything. And I'm not even a sports nut! So sorry they had to start in such a sad way, though...