HI Nancy:

What are the veins on the backs of our hands supposed to indicate? Please enlighten me!

Shirley H.

Shirley, I have no idea what validity this idea has, it turned up in a paper while I was scanning around the web and - unfortunately - I didn't make a note at the time so that I could easily pull up the reference. But what it said was that those veins on the back of your hands may be indicative of whether you might be prone to tn. If they are prominent and particularly squiggly that's a bad sign. Well, my veins are really really prominent and certainly wiggly and I began to verify this by asking all my friends to show me their hands! Sure enough, there's a big difference among individuals, and it isn't necessarily age related. So then I went back and checked a bunch of old photos and found a few that had my hands prominently exposed - wow, there I am, a slender young lovely in a sarong in a little grass hut in Fiji and my hands are like a contour map of veins. So I guess so far as I'm concerned the equation holds: prominent squiggly veins correlates with tn! But of course that means absolutely nothing however much it has amused me to do the checking out. And even if it did mean something, would that just lead to a whole generation of worry warts looking at their hands for years and waiting for lightning to strike? As a silly addendum, I wonder why it's so difficult to draw blood from those veins when they are so easy to see? When my arm was in a cast and they couldn't get at the usual place, and the other arm wouldn't work either (?) I said well just use these big veins. Very reluctantly, that's what the phebotomist finally did but what a hassle, took forever and by the time she was through my hand was so bruised and sore it looked like it had been run over by a bus. I was curious but she was in no mood to explain why it was so much trouble.

Not a very helpful bit of info I'm afraid, but go have some fun with your friends and check out their hands. Nancy

Kimmy,

22-years, 23, ... eternity. Hardly matters which.

Bob S

Hi Nancy:

Well, I didn't have noticeable veins in my hands till the last year or so - and I am now 77. And I sure don't have squiggly veins - so the theory doesn't work with me! I think, myself, that it is the drooping of various parts of our bodies that might produce TN - you know, the blood vessel/s drooping againt the trigeminal nerve. That is what I tell myself, anyway.

It is so good to read your writings again, Nancy.

Shirley H.

Shirley, I know drooping, I know sagging, what really set me back on my heels was the first time I read that my BRAIN was sagging! NO! Take it all, Father Time, but please, no, not a sagging brain, that's just too much to visualize.

N
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I'm with you there. I'm having a birthday soon, and they're just not as fun anymore.

KD

I can sympathize with the misdiagnosis, KimmyDawn, my neurologist thinks I was misdiagnosed for 15 years before I saw her. It pains me to think of all the antibiotics I took for non-existent sinus infections during that time. Between the ages of 18 and 33, I was diagnosed with many sinus infections, TMJ, atypical TMJ, atypical migraines, more sinus infections ("But Doctor, my head isn't stuffy!" "Yes it is!") etc...

On the bright side - without a car, I'm walking more, and with TN pain, I'm eating less - so, I can happily say, I'm getting less saggy by the week

Love,
Jan

OH, that's another aspect! Yes to the antibiotics, etc!

I'm now resistant and if I get strep have to have shots immediately or end up in the hosp. I've been able to go a few years with antibiotics only once though!

I'm sorry you went through all of this as well.

KD

Gee, Nancy:

I didn't realize our brains sagged too. Well, why not - everything else is descending!

S
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y.. You see, it has affected me, too. ARRGH.