I suffer from chilblains.
They really hurt and burn. My toes get all swelled up and inflamed, and they look like this...
(not my actual foot...but it looked a lot like this,
but my thumb toe and second toe are not that weird-looking)
The chilblains often precede a migraine...which is even less fun. One thing that does help sometimes is to cool them off by running them under cold water. If you read the literature, this is NOT what they recommend, but it is what works for ME.
Last night, however, they were particularly bad. I tried the cold water thing. Didn't help. I needed to go for a little taper run...and getting the taper-crazies means getting to do that little run is really, really, really important to maintaining a shred of sanity. There was, however, no way I could stand putting on socks let alone shoes. My toes were on fire.
I wracked my brain. Inflammation...in-fluh-mation...in-flam-ayshun... what to do? what to do? I needed something different. I needed an old wives' tale-ish home remedy. And for some reason, my bout with mastitis popped into my head.
*ping*
One of the most effective methods of reducing inflammation when I had mastitis was to put a grated, raw potato compress in my bra...directly on the point of breast inflammation. It was pretty messy and kind of icky...especially how it basically cooked the freakin' potato...no lie.
So I grabbed a couple of potatoes from the fridge, grated those puppies up, and put the shred into baggies. And then I put the baggies of potato sludge on my toes. And how awesome is it to find out after the fact that the chilblain home remedy website recommends potato usage as treatment? I am smarter than I thought! or something...
It felt SO. GOOD.
And it totally worked!
My toes were normal enough to comfortably put on socks and shoes and go for a little 3-mile easy run.
It was very messy though, and I was wishing I had done it in the bathroom. I ended up needing to walk across the carpet and up the stairs with potato goo and shreds dripping from my feet...and I ended up needing to clean up that mess :(
Of course there were jokes about having hash browns for dinner.
I am now wondering if I should bring some taters, baggies and a grater to Las Vegas in case the situation flares up before my race. I'd probably need to check the grater since it's metal and has cutting surfaces... which would ruin my idea of just taking a carry-on. what to do? what to do?
Had you ever heard of chilblains before?
Should I bring the grater?
