Dear Pixi,

To be honest I had similar concerns when I started to date my wife a year and a half ago. The truth is, unless the disease makes you unable to do normal things with your hands, people don't notice. They just don't. You may be overly self conscious abut this. You are quite aware of it but new people in your life will not be. It's not that big a deal.

Sure you'll need to tell the guy about this, but in my opinion not until you are in a exclusive relationship. If he does ask about it, don't make it into more than it is. By that time if the guy is really interested it will not matter to him.

"Yea, I met this girl, and everything was going great until I found out she had.......a........ Dup-re-turns. I mean, what did she expect. That I'd still want to go out with her??" :-)

Pixi,

I'm sorry you feel that way...but honestly, I don't think people look at other people that closely. For example, I had a nose job about a year ago to remove a big bump from my nose.....and not one person noticed (well, one did ask if I had gotten a hair cut).

So far as Dupuytrens, as I mentioned in another post, my grandmother had it (but it was never diagnosed); her hand was somewhat contracted and she couldn't crochet as she got older. This isn't my imagination....I have told my two sisters about DC and they've looked at stuff on the internet and they both agree with me that our grandmother had it. When I got diagnosed, I wrote my aunts (my grandmother's daughters) and cousins and told them about it....just a little head's up since it's genetic...and I mentioned in the email that I realize now that "grandma" had it. One of my aunt's wrote me back: "Megan, what Grandma are you talking about. I don't recall anything about my mother's hands." !!!

Megan

Hi Pixi,

I hope you didn't think I was trying to minimize your concerns. I, too, have had a lot of fear about where this could go, although I'm handling it a lot better now than when I was diagnosed.

I think the biggest difficulty for me has been the question, "how could someone as healthy as me develop a degenerative disease?" I'm a bit of a health nut. I've always walked and jogged, kept me weight down, and thought that I eat an extremely healthy diet, at least compared to most westerners. I seldom drink alcohol and use gobs of sunscreen...even here in Seattle, where the sun doesn't shine so much!!!. Sometimes I've wondered, well, if this is wrong with me, what else is wrong?

Anyway, I have become a bit more vigilant about what I eat and I have almost completely eliminated refined sugar from my diet...just to see if it has any effect (this has been going on for one month). I have also been taking NAC and I'm trying to incorporate more raw vegetables into my diet. It might be my imagination, but I do think the nodule has flattened and is a bit softer.

I would have felt very alone with this if I hadn't stumbled onto this forum.

Thanks, Megan and JAnn. No, don't worry; I know you weren't trying to make less of my concerns. You're all in this boat with me!

I am very healthy, too -- I'm even in a rowing crew, which of course poses a whole new set of worries regarding my hands.

I really should cut down on my sugar intake. It's the only thing I have difficulty controlling in my diet; I just love dessert! Good news on the NAC. I have been taking lecithin every day for about six weeks now, and what looked like the beginning of a new knuckle pad has gone. Time will tell...ditto the search for Mr Right!

That's really funny, Colleen, thanks for sharing. Thank God for this forum; you are all amazing!