Arvo
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
[I'm diagnosed as having Late Stage Lyme with co-infections, one of them being a reactivated herpesvirus. I wasn't sure to post it here or in the "alternative diagnosis" section, I'm sorry if it should have been posted there instead.]
In the category 'afraid to ask but important to ask', does anyone here also have spontaneous bruises? Is this a known phenomenon in ME/CFS?
Since the beginning of my illness, I have spontaneous bruises on mostly my legs. At first I thought they were just normal bruises that I missed getting due to severe cognitive issues, but I wasn't sure as they became also more frequent than before while I really couldn't remember bumping those places. When my ear lobe turned dark purple I knew I wasn't imagining things, so I went to a GP with it with the well-known result of getting dismissed.
For me this has been part of my symptoms for all the time I was ill. I get them mostly on my legs, but at times my lower arms get one when I have tried to wash my hair myself or raised my arms to get something from a high shelf. Together with my standing tachycardia, they get worse after for example having had the flu, so they are a bit of a measure on how I am doing. Sometimes they are obvious burst blood vessels, creating a bump, often there isn't. They also don't behave/look like normal bruises, in that they can start brown before getting very dark purple, and they can take weeks to go away (but I get the impression it goes faster when I am in bed). Getting an actual bruise next to these spots looks and behaves different I think (with more yellow and green tints for example and quicker healing.)
Unfortunately, in the last years frequency has become much worse. It's currently not unusual to always have them, and have several at a time (like last week having three on one leg). A while back I had more than nine at the same time on my legs. And frankly, they scare me. Not just the increasing frequency, but also because if that happens there, where else in my body might that happen too? Plus my legs seem to be getting places with permanent damage where you can still see dark places under the skin where bursts have been.
It has once been explained to me as the result of stiff contracted blood vessels not dilating fast enough when my tachycardia kicks in, creating pressure and therefore bursts. It fits what happens (they often happen after tachycardia), but I'm taking medication for the tachycardia that slows my heart rate, and it still happens. A lot. Since reading a bit about blood clots, rigid red blood cells and possible red blood cell deformity, I wonder if they might also be a sort of blood traffic jam.
Anyway, sorry for getting rambley. I'm finding it an uncomfortable topic. But I just did a spontaneous search and saw @Invisible Woman , @MerryB and @Skycloud describe something similar, making them the first people I know who might be having the same as me, so I decided to ask who else has the same thing happening.
In the category 'afraid to ask but important to ask', does anyone here also have spontaneous bruises? Is this a known phenomenon in ME/CFS?
Since the beginning of my illness, I have spontaneous bruises on mostly my legs. At first I thought they were just normal bruises that I missed getting due to severe cognitive issues, but I wasn't sure as they became also more frequent than before while I really couldn't remember bumping those places. When my ear lobe turned dark purple I knew I wasn't imagining things, so I went to a GP with it with the well-known result of getting dismissed.
For me this has been part of my symptoms for all the time I was ill. I get them mostly on my legs, but at times my lower arms get one when I have tried to wash my hair myself or raised my arms to get something from a high shelf. Together with my standing tachycardia, they get worse after for example having had the flu, so they are a bit of a measure on how I am doing. Sometimes they are obvious burst blood vessels, creating a bump, often there isn't. They also don't behave/look like normal bruises, in that they can start brown before getting very dark purple, and they can take weeks to go away (but I get the impression it goes faster when I am in bed). Getting an actual bruise next to these spots looks and behaves different I think (with more yellow and green tints for example and quicker healing.)
Unfortunately, in the last years frequency has become much worse. It's currently not unusual to always have them, and have several at a time (like last week having three on one leg). A while back I had more than nine at the same time on my legs. And frankly, they scare me. Not just the increasing frequency, but also because if that happens there, where else in my body might that happen too? Plus my legs seem to be getting places with permanent damage where you can still see dark places under the skin where bursts have been.
It has once been explained to me as the result of stiff contracted blood vessels not dilating fast enough when my tachycardia kicks in, creating pressure and therefore bursts. It fits what happens (they often happen after tachycardia), but I'm taking medication for the tachycardia that slows my heart rate, and it still happens. A lot. Since reading a bit about blood clots, rigid red blood cells and possible red blood cell deformity, I wonder if they might also be a sort of blood traffic jam.
Anyway, sorry for getting rambley. I'm finding it an uncomfortable topic. But I just did a spontaneous search and saw @Invisible Woman , @MerryB and @Skycloud describe something similar, making them the first people I know who might be having the same as me, so I decided to ask who else has the same thing happening.
I didn't bruise easily, and I still don't from banging into things. (I do feel a lot of pressure from bad circulation if I bang my knee, which at one point led to a burst vessel making my whole knee black and blue from a small bang against something- so I now sit down for a short bit with my leg up immediately after when I have a knee-banging accident, to prevent that.)