Curious about a symptom

So one of the 5 or 6 symptoms that returned when I relapsed was the one where the skin on my fingers will wrinkle once it touches water.

The same way it would get wrinkly if you left your hand under water for 10-20 minutes, like if you are in a swimming pool or taking a long bath, however it was happening 30 seconds into touching water.

And then when it dried the top layer of skin will dry and flake away. I would always have to put lotion on after, every time.

I know it's a "lyme" symptom, but how common is this?

AND, does anyone understand the biological reason it happens (why/how?)?

Thanks.

Pirouette said...
My fingers and hands started wrinkling like that even without water - this started at some point in my treatment - not sure why. We had a good discussion about this on the forum awhile back - maybe you can do a search for it or maybe someone bookmarked it. There were several of us with the same sx!

-p

Wow. Guess what Piroutte. When I searched this guess what came up? Threads of people describing the exact same thing. HOWEVER, many were Fibro and Crohns forums.

Uhmmm....yea, Fibro and Crohns are symptoms not root causes (I've experienced both with lyme). It's sad enough when you know you have lyme and struggle with over-coming it. Just imagine if you thought you had something else because you were diagnosed with a "symptom".

"sigh".

Absolutely (fibro, chrons) - a few brave Lymees have tried to encourage those on the fibro forum who talked about some really clear Lyme sx - to get tested for Lyme and it usually doesn't go well. And chron's is SO complicated - it could be 100 things causing GI problems - MDs have come up with all these names for the groups of sx and so many people probably have the same underlying problem - gut dysbiosis and a pathogen overgrowth.

One of the key issues w/ fibro sufferers is that they suffered for DECADES - just like Lyme sufferers - AND were told they were crazy hypochondriacs and lazy and manipulative, not sick. We all know exactly how that can impact someone who is seriously ill. And then, Big Pharma comes along and develops an expensive response to symptoms (that works in only a small percentage of sufferers) and the main message to these people is VINDICATION. Not "please find out what the underlying cause of your symptoms are!" so I see some of them digging their heels into being told it's not fibro. They don't hear "your sx have been diagnosed, not your illness" - instead they hear "fibro isn't real" and they've had enough of that nonsense. It's so frustrating.

I have a dear who has struggled w/ GI problems most of her adulthood - but 10 yrs ago her boyfriend had Lyme. She's now remarried with someone else and had a negative Lyme test (administered by a regular MD so we all know how that probably went). but she has so many Lyme sx I don't know where to begin. She has a family history of GI issues as well and so it's easy to blame the DNA and not see another complication to her issues. I've talked with her 3 times about getting retested. She's very open to it yet hasn't done it primarily because too many other issues seem to steal her focus (other health problems, infertility, life trauma). She hasn't realized yet that a commonality might be Lyme & Co.

During our discussion about the skin wrinkling here on the Lyme forum a few people identified what sounded like very reasonable suggestions for the wrinkling but I can't remember exactly what they were - the destruction of callogen, maybe?

-p

ah ha, I found it.

www.newhealthadvisor.com/Wrinkled-Fingertips-Thyroid.html

It is equally important to ask your doctor to conduct a full thyroid workup that should include Reverse T3, T3, T4, Free T4, Free T3, and antibody tests.