I Feel Like I ’m Burning Alive. It ’ s Hard for People to Believe Me

In 2018, I woke up on my birthday around 2 or 3 a.m. with a funny feeling in my left hand. It started as a slight itch on my thumb that quickly morphed into a different sensation—the feeling of the thumb beginning to swell, followed by the same feeling in my fingers and sections of my palm, until my hand was almost double its normal size. Later that morning, I visited an orthopedist I’d seen once or twice before for other reasons. He gave me a shot to prevent further swelling, and I went on my way. It was an unremarkable visit. Soon after, another strange thing happened: My hands began to feel like they were on fire—a painful and odd occurrence that I would soon come to know as the hallmark of Erythromelalgia—or “Man on Fire Syndrome.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] James Baldwin famously said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” Sometimes, though, your pain might really be unprecedented—so rare that no stories about it yet exist. In that case, you must be the teller of a story that renders your experience real. Only 1 in 100,000 people in the U.S. have reportedly been diagnosed with Erythromelalgia (or what many of those of us living with it prefer to call “EM”). A neurovascular illness, EM causes the blood vessels—meant to keep blood flowing and supply the body and its organs with nutrients and oxygen—to malfun...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Evergreen freelance health Source Type: news