The Purple Handed Woman!

To say I'm a bit of a rarity seems to be a huge understatemnet these days!

Last Monday, I noticed that my left hand was a different colour to my right, with a nice purple hue to it. Hmmm, strange me thinks, maybe I slept funny? 4 hours later and it's still purple, not normal I'm thinking. Tuesday, same thing. Wednesday same thing again but this was accompanied by a day long dizzy spell. As I'd been getting a few chest pains too, I emailed my cardiac nurse. Er, can you pop into clinic tomorrow? was her reply.

1 week before Xmas...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

So, off I troop to my second home on Thursday, only to be descended on by 2 cardiologists and a vascular registrar. Straight down to chest x-ray for me which showed that the pneumonia is still lingering (apparently it takes 3 months to clear, yeah, thanks for telling me that before now) which accounts for the chest pains. It also showed that thankfully, the stent is still sat in place and hasn't gone for a wander; phew!

There's talk of admitting me for more invasive tests...er, you'll have to drag me to a ward kicking and screaming says I. There's a little girl that has been promised 1 mummy at home for Christmas, and she's bloody well getting it! Thankfully, I won that argument!

So, they sit down with me and my cardio shakes his head and says 'I'm so sorry Louise, this very rarely happens...but I think we're all starting to realise that normal never really applies to you!' Yup doc, this one of a kind thing is starting to wear a little thin now!

So, it would turn out that, when they put the stent in, they had to cover up the entrance to the main blood vessel that supplies the left arm. What happens in 'normal' people is the smaller blood vessels around it compenasate and grow to supply the arm and there's usually not a problem. But, you've guessed it, not in my case!

So, I now have a purple arm; good for party tricks I suppose. The good news is that they don't need to do anything now; it may just be that it stays as it is and they can leave it alone.

So, to recap: I have a rare complication to the operation that was done to correct the rare side effect of the first operation that was done to correct the rare condition that I was born with! Is anyone keeping up with all this, because I'm starting to struggle now!!