Rheumatoid Arthritis Support Group
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory, multisystem, autoimmune disorder. It is a disabling and painful condition which can lead to substantial loss of mobility due to pain and joint destruction. The disease is also systemic in that it often also affects many extra-articular tissues throughout the body including the skin, blood vessels, heart, lungs, and...
Well, THIS is weird.
I've got the kind of iPhone that gives you the option of using thumbprint recognition instead of punching in your pin number to open it up. It has never worked for me. I don't care, so I didn't pursue it, just assumed that something was wrong with my phone, or i'd messed up the directions to set it up.
This afternoon, while selling plants from my nursery (outdoors, appropriately distanced, not-touch payment system, masks, etc) I noticed a customer using the thumb recognition option and mentioned that I could not set it up. She said "Oh, my Momn can't either. She has this autoimmune thing that's sort of like lupus, and the skin on her fingertips (palm side) sort of peeled off, and he doesn't have fingerprints anymore.'
Well. How could I not have noticed this? I guess because a farmer's hands are often calloused, or because old people have crappy close vision, or maybne I'm just not observant.
I have noticed 'peely' fingertip skin occasionally, almost as if there had been a mild sunburn.
I took photos and blew them up and I literally do not have a full fingerprint on one single finger.
Does this mean i could embark on a life of crime with no repercussions? I believe there is an opportunity here which shoudl not be squandered.
Anyone else run across the particularly weird autoimmune synptom?
Also.....it is truly alarming to see how penis-like a closeup of one's thumb, palm-side view, can be especially for thos eof us with Celtic, pink-tnged complexions. I have had to delete it from my phone camera.
But I do wonder, if we end up wearing masks all the time in public, will places like banks require a thumbprint scan to sign in? My very rural bank already has locked doors and you get buzzed in once they recognize you, so you're asked to take off sunglasses and pull down hoods on jackets - at least, that was the deal pre-Covid. Now, of course it's just the drive through for most transactions.
All kidding said, I have an android and have a lot of trouble with finger taps and finger tip slides. I almost always use a stylus.
ATMS work wihtout thumbprints.
I mentioned the disappearing fingerprints to a friend who is an extraordinary researcher; her field is ancient ceramics, and she literally specializes in lifting fingerprints off of very, very old pottery fragments. (The prints of the potter, embedded in the glaze. Not fingerprints like we'd think of forensically now.) She also has Parkinson's, and she's one of the few people I've ever met who can dive right into the most obtuse medical abstracts or entire publications and sort them out. I figure between those two attributes, she'll come up with more information for me in no time!
Since i posted about it on Facebook, three friends who have had chemo have mentioned experiences it to some degree. Perhaps the methotrexate is the common denominator.
Of course, now we're all thoroughly doused in hand sanitizer and doing a lot of scrubbing, so this probably isn't the right time to do a baseline check on your own fingers.