Some of you will remember a blog I wrote a few months back talking about how my hands would turn an odd shade of blue on occasion (having said that, it occurs to me that any part of your body turning blue is pretty odd, and usually a bad sign…).

Anyhoo, it progressed a little, with joint issues (hands and arms, knees, ankles etc) and a general fatigue. Since at times it was keeping me from sleeping, I decided to visit the doctors about it. Turns out that it isn’t caused by stress or caffeine…

Well, I’ve now been diagnosed with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease (or MCTD), an auto-immune disease in which my immune system decides that the connective tissue between my joints is some horrid infection that must be dealt with.

It’s apparently considered an overlap disease, where you end up manifesting several different conditions (in my case the Raynaud’s Phenomenon, joint issues and the fatigue). There are options to manage the condition, but no “cure” as it were. It’s apparently a relatively rare condition (which is par for the course for me…), which explains why there’s not a great deal of information or treatments for it. The “best” option is apparently a course of the anti-malarial Hydroxychloroquine to relieve some of the symptoms (although the doctor doesn’t want to start me on that just yet…).

So there we have it. More updates to come no doubt.

B