However, I wanted to show you what severe edema really means; because on Sunday, after over a week of being sick and only being able to take my diuretics intermittently, I was 26lbs heavier than I was this morning , and my limbs looked like this:
That was after about two hours, with a light dress sock on; and the swelling above... oy. That's about an inch from the bottom of the dent, to the swollen upper calf.
And that's about 3/4" from the wrist, to the swollen forearm.
You can imagine, that gets very uncomfortable. Sore, painful to touch, feeling like your skin is going to burst whenever you put any weight on it.
The joints swell too, as the fluid builds up around them. It's almost as bad as the arthritis.
And then there's the peripheral neuropathy that goes along with the edema. When the fluid builds up so much, it squeezes the nerves, and you get pain, numbness, tingling like bad pins and needles. Add to that it squeezes the blood vessels, screws up your circulation and your blood pressure.
It seems rather lame and inadequate to say, it really just sucks. A lot.
