My fingers are starting to bother me, as mentioned here. Not much, but they dont work right, if you know what I mean. In the morning they are stiff for some time – for about 30 minutes or so – and then I can bend them into my hand as a “normal” person. Let’s not get into how my entire body feels like in the morning.

As mentioned here I go to my physiotherapist twice a week using paraffin bath. This warms my fingers and my finger exercises are so much better than without the paraffin. And I really like it. It is also good for joint pain.

If it could only slow down the process I am happy. I need my fingers, as everyone else does.

Besides the stiffness my fingers hurt a bit in the joints, and they are very itchy. I guess this means that there is some kind of activity in them. My skin is soft and not hardened but my specialist says that this might mean that something might happen to my fingers. She cannot say for sure – but maybe. They are also very beginning to look wax-like, and this also means that something is happening. My thought is sclerodactyly, which is the condition when the fingers became tight, stretched, wax-like, and hardened.

You can see pictures of my fingers below. Do they look like sclerodactyly on its way? Is there anything I can do to stop the process besides what I already try to – with exercises? My next visit at the specialist is in October – I hope to get more answers there.

But I know that no matter what I will manage. If my fingers will curl more than this I know that I can learn how to live with it.

My joints / fingers are slowly getting more and more stiff, and some are beginning to twist – not much but they dont look like they used to. In the mornings it is almost impossible to bend them into a fist – it gets better after a while, but not to normal – they are stiff and that is that.

In Denmark we have a special agreement within the health care. Some cronic diseases gives you the possibility to go to a physiotherapist for free – with a few specific rules, it is not individual treatment. You must join a class for aerobic, use the gym at the physiotherapist and so on.

A few months ago I found out that scleroderma is on this list, so I went to my doctor to ask if I could go there. He agreed. They have a paraphine bath there. I talked with my physiotherapist about the possibility to try the paraffin bath – exersice with my fingers AFTER a paraffin bath must be better than without, because my fingers are very warm.

Eventhough it is individual, we agreed that I should use paraffin bath twice a week. I go to the room myself and do the treatment all by myself.

It is easy, it is fun, it is warm and I just LOVE the feeling dipping my fingers in the hot paraffin. And this is what it looks like, when I am finished – I dip my fingers, take them up, make the paraffin go stiff, dip my fingers again and I do it 10 times.

A study using combination of hand exersice and paraffin bath has been made. It seemed to improve mobility, perceived stiffness and skin elasticity. But it has only been tested on a few number of persons, but it seemed that the combination was better than only use exersice. So I continue with my combination with paraffin bath and exersice.

I plan on doing this 3 times a week when the winter comes because the hot wax must be good against Raynaud’s.