Spelling Bee: “What’s a chilblain?”1
It all seems rather Dickensian, but yes, I had chilblains a few years ago. It was a kind of cool and quite rainy winter here in Southern California, and we hadn’t yet turned the heat on (hey, natural gas is expensive!), which meant the house was running in the mid-50s. As it turns out, when it’s damp and cool but not freezing, that’s when you get chilblains. Mine weren’t as severe as some of the ones you’ll see if you click on that link; they were little raised red itchy bumps on my hands. My regular doctor didn’t know what to make of them and sent me to the dermatologist, who immediately identified them as chilblains. “I haven’t seen those in years,” he told me.
Anyway, the solution, aside from turning the heat up a little, was to pick up some knit gloves that cover the hands but not the fingers:
So not only am I now safe from chilblains, but I am also fully prepared for a job selling matchsticks and candle stubs.
- For what it’s worth, I did also try it as “chillblain” even though that isn’t how it’s spelled. ↩︎
Viscosity 
Mid 50s? What did you do when you were living in NY?
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Turned the heat on now and then, I guess! 😁
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I love cut-off gloves! I double up when I deliver in the winter or play guitar in a cold venue (erm, friend’s basement) Hehe🧤
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Sometimes you need those fingertips available!
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I had not heard of these before.
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The funny thing is the thought of them had crossed my mind, but I didn’t know anything about them except from reading like Dickens books and didn’t think they could possibly be what I had, so I didn’t bother looking them up. When the dermatologist said they were chilblains I was like, “No way!”
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I guess for the most part they are problems associated with poverty and mostly they were prevalent in ‘the olden days’…hence their scarcity around here these days.
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Yep, and it requires very specific temperature and humidity conditions for them to develop too, apparently, which you don’t see here in Southern California very often …
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Luminous wisdom
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Your Fam Doc did not know they were Chilblains?? Hilarious! Well, sort of! I loe the cut-off gloves. You look ‘gangsta’ James!!
{{hugs}} BellaSita Mum & **purrss** BellaDharma
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I think I look more like a matchstick g̶i̶r̶l̶ boy, but I’ll take gangsta! 😂
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Cosmic clarity
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I didn’t know what they were either but certainly remember hearing them being mentioned by relatives in the chilly, damp, west of Ireland 🙂
yes – natural gas is so pricey! I just saw a more detailed hour-by-hour breakdown of my usage from PG&E and the gas is still being used in the middle of the night, even though my heating is turned off. Why?! The water heater. So inefficient!
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I feel like they would have definitely been more in the spirit of things if we were in the West of Ireland! 😁
Lately I’ve been calling SDG&E “San Diego Gouging & Extortion”, we can use the same last two words for PG&E and it would still be perfectly valid I think lol
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Ha! We eventually gave away most of our CD’s after our last move, they’re damn heave *grin* times have changed….
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