Last Update for 2023 – Frozen Toes and Other Woes
The saga continues. Back at the beginning of 2022, I had thought it a good time to give an update.
My main purpose was to talk about “frozen toes and other woes.” Have you experienced numbness in your toes, that kind of frozen feeling, since getting Lyme disease? I have.
It’s important to note that so-called frozen toes can be an indication for diabetes, so if you have any kind of numbness in your toes, get it checked! The last thing you want to do is to add diabetes to the rest of your Lyme disease challenges.
I had recently begun to have numbness in my toes. It started with the big toe on my left foot, somewhere around the end of October. Then it started in the big toe on my right foot, as well. Then it began to hit some of my other toes at times, too. If you’ve ever had slightly frozen toes or any other digit, that’s what it feels like.
The toes were not dead to feeling, just numb. They felt really cold. In fact, if I put thick socks on, the feeling was significantly less noticeable.
But with this numbness, I could still feel hot and cold, pressure, or any other sensation. It’s kind of weird.
Keep an Open Mind!
Again, it’s important to rule out something like diabetes when your toes go through numbness like this. I was checked thoroughly with glucose level tests and the “whole nine yards.” I did not and do not have diabetes or any major sugar level problems.
Just to be on the safe side, my LLMP put me on a supplement that would reduce the effects if there was a problem with sugar levels. In my case, it confirmed, once again, that I did not have diabetes.
Is it Common with Lyme Disease Patients?
I asked my Lyme doctor if anyone else with Lyme disease has this problem, and he said it was pretty common. So if you experience frozen toes, don’t be surprised. At the same time, make sure to get thoroughly checked to make sure you don’t have diabetes, which can be life-threatening.
If you do have this “frozen toes” sensation and it is diabetes, it can be really serious. It can be a serious problem with circulation below the knees. I know people who have lost toes and feet because of it. So do get it checked out.
But about Omicron…
Omicron is the name of the latest common variant of Sars-Coronavirus-2 – aka, COVID-19. The question for any of us who have Lyme disease is always, “What will a new disease do to us?”
The answer is unknown until it’s over, unfortunately. But other than the fact that I really hate lockdowns, masks, and fights over whether the vax is a good thing or the mark of the devil, it wasn’t a problem.
Vaccines
I do not get the flu vaccine. Several of the doctors I have had, including the most recent who has really helped me a huge amount, have advised me against it. They say that I have enough problems without adding the risk of getting really sick from the flu vaccine.
On the other hand, my doctor advised me to get the vaccine for Sara-Coronavirus-2, because he believes the risk of getting the disease (these were the early days of the pandemic) was worse than the risks associated with the mRNA vaccines.
Having done like we all do because of the challenges of getting help for Lyme disease, I do a lot of digging, and came to the conclusion that, contrary to most of what you hear from the detractors, mRNA vaccines are probably the safest vaccines ever to come out. They are no more dangerous to our DNA than eating a good steak or a banana.
My biggest concern after finding out everything I could about mRNA vaccines was whether or not they would work.
Vaccines are Not a “Silver Bullet.”
No vaccine ever invented prevents infection. The detractors have repeatedly hammered people with stories about people getting infected who have been vaccinated as “proof” that they don’t work. But they are ignoring or lying about the way vaccines actually do work. They work by making our body react to foreign proteins. This is called an “immune response.”
When someone then is infected by the disease the vaccines are designed to protect us against, if the vaccine did the trick, the body immediately recognizes the foreign proteins from the virus or other pathogen and mounts an attack against it using the defenses already created by the body thanks to the vaccine.
If the body has successfully created a very strong immunity, a person will barely even notice they are infected, or the disease just won’t last very long in their body. This is how every vaccine ever invented works, and that goes all the way back to the 1700s, when they invented the first smallpox vaccines (they were kind of gross).
Our Choice
In our case (my wife and I), we have had all three shots, including the booster. She had Pfizer. I had Moderna. We were exposed to the virus for almost an entire day, yet neither of us got sick. We were tested several days later after a family member got two positive tests in a row, and our tests came back negative.
So whether Lyme disease has actually given my body a hyper-active immune system, or whether the vaccine did the trick, we cannot tell. But the bottom line is, we have not fallen ill. So our saga continues…
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Update
Since moving to British Columbia’s far north, just a couple of hours from the Yukon, and far away from all the air pollution of the south, many of my systems have disappeared, and this now includes the frozen toes.
My toes now feel about as normal as they would for most healthy, active men in their mid-forties and beyond. In fact, many people are still surprised to find I’m in my mid sixties.
Like anyone who’s been going around the sun for more than 6 decades, I’ve picked up a few aches and pains, and likely some permanent ones thanks to Lyme Disease. But my advice to anyone fighting this battle or any other is – don’t give up! Life is more than feeling sixteen all the time, and it’s still got a lot of beauty to look forward to!
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