ripples and twinkles

For the last few weeks, I have had one strange fingernail.  It is the ring fingernail on my left hand – the nail has tiny little ripples and waves in it.  When I first noticed the abnormality, I thought that I had somehow burned my fingernail, or injured the nail bed.  I have a tendency to move too quickly, to bump into things in my haste to do something or to get somewhere, and my hands take the brunt of the damage.  I will never be called graceful, with my little scrapes and cuts all over.

But then I got curious, as I often do.  I went online and searched for rippled nails, and found a most informative slideshow of different nail problems and what they might mean in terms of your overall health – for instance, bluish nails might mean anemia or a blood circulation problem, yellowish nails might mean a liver problem.  If you have nails with black stripes underneath, you might have a skin melanoma.  The possible diseases just got worse and worse, so when I got to the rippled nails photograph, I was almost scared to look. 

But I read the text quite bravely and found out… that it’s an early indication of psoriasis.

I already know that I have psoriasis.  I inherited it from my grandfather.  I had a few maudlin “I’m going to have scaly skin all my life, WHY ME?” moments during my teenage years, but it actually hasn’t been too bad.  I have patches of scaly skin behind my ears and on my scalp (it looks like light dandruff), and in the colder months I can get little patches around my waistline and on my legs.  I have a salicylic acid gel and a stinky tar ointment, and otherwise I just moisturize as much as I can.  Totally livable.

I can even live with rippled fingernails, I guess.

*~*~*~*~*

So Thanksgiving was fun, if hectic.  The kids screamed and interrupted my sleep whenever they stayed over at mama’s, so I’m still catching up on quality rest.  The feast on Thursday was enjoyable.  My brother loaned his “Left 4 Dead” game to us for the weekend, and we all had fun shooting zombies.  Mom and I completely avoided Black Friday, but we did shop for some things on Saturday – I am doing some hush-hush artsy stuff for some friends. 

I also bought some Christmas decorations for the house.  I’m not putting up the Christmas tree, which is broken and needs to be propped up with heavy books to even stand up, let alone stand straight.  We never put anything under the tree anyway, because that seems to be an invitation for cats to wrestle under there.  But I figure that if I place smaller things around the house, it will be quite festive.  And lights!  Twinkle lights wherever I want them, not just on a tree in the corner.