16/11/2025
🌿 A Long Read for Those Who’ve Been Wondering, Worrying, or Waiting
Trigger Warning: This post gently mentions pregnancy loss, chronic illness, and medical content. Please read at your own pace, in a space that feels right for you. 💛
Grab a cuppa — this is me being real, honest, and hopefully helpful.
I spend my days helping people work through their pain; its what I'm trained to do… and now my own hand has decided to join the drama.
Different pain, same tools — and yes, I’m practicing what I preach. But finally after 5 weeks I'm at the stage of slowly, tentatively returning to work. This will be done in stages; as I have a plan that I have practised so as not to put pressure on my thumb & finger...and it will give you the same sense of comfort you've always had in my previous massages. I have lived with Autoimmune Issues for a very long time. This attack is new & even has my medical teams bamboozled to the point they held multidisciplinary meetings about it. I was in hospital for 2 weeks- a long time in today's standards.
The photo below might just show a swollen, angry thumb — but underneath is something most people will never experience.
🔥 What’s Actually Happening
This is microvascular ischemia: tiny micro-blood-clots forming inside the smallest vessels of the thumb and fingers, blocking oxygen and setting the nerves off like fireworks.
Google will tell you about micro-clots — but this version is something far rarer, far more layered, and far more complex.
These clots formed because of my rare combination of:
• Relapsing Polychondritis (RP)
• Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS)
RP usually attacks cartilage, but in a severe flare it can inflame blood vessels too.
APS makes blood want to clot, even while on blood thinners.
Put them together, and the tiniest vessels in the hand become the perfect storm.
🔥 What the Pain Feels Like
The nerves are screaming in a high-pitched roar 24/7 — never quiet, never soft.
It’s a burn on top of a burn…
Like pressing the hand onto a hot iron, then pouring boiling water over it, all sitting on top of a chilblain.
Every breath sends electrical pain flooding through inflamed nerves.
More oxygen hits the arteries, and that pressure slams into nerves trapped inside blocked vessels.
It’s brutal. And relentless.
🌟 How Rare Is This?
RP affects 3–5 people per million.
APS adds another layer of rarity.
And microvascular clots in the fingers while on blood thinners?
Well under 1 in 100,000.
⏳ What’s the Recovery?
Tiny vessels heal slowly.
Nerve pain often lingers long after the clots settle.
So for now it’s a waiting game — letting blood flow return and hoping the nerves eventually calm their screaming.
A Bit of My Story, For Those Who Don’t Know
Before computers and online communities, my “usual” flares were so bad I couldn’t even turn over in bed.
Hours of staring at walls.
No support.
Doctors didn’t understand it — I was misdiagnosed with lupus, polyarthritis, and everything in between.
I lived with global, invisible pain.
No swollen joints.
No proof.
Just a body that refused to work.
Eight years ago, everything changed.
I went off all Salicylates, Histamines and Amines for seven months after an MCAS diagnosis — and something miraculous happened:
My fibro disappeared.
I went fully carnivore and my strength returned.
But seven months of eating brown food was enough.
I shifted into a hybrid carnivore-safe diet that allowed me to work 7 days a week with athletes, dancers, injuries, and chronic-pain clients of all ages.
People often comment when my weight drops —
that’s usually when I’m back in carnivore mode, lowering inflammation and quietening my salicylate and histamine buckets so I can join in more with life.
But social events are hard when your plate stays empty.
It’s embarrassing.
Yet sometimes that’s my safest choice.
This year my carb intake crept up, my weight went up — but I slept again. (Some of us actually need some carbs for serotonin production — I learnt that the hard way.) Most people don’t realise how many medications, supplements and even toothpaste contain salicylates.
Add in your salads, fruit, veges — your bucket fills quickly. Then you get symptoms blamed on “age” or “weather changes”:
• afternoon fatigue
• joint inflammation
• old injuries aching
• headaches & migraines
• dandruff
• skin flares
• psoriasis and eczema patches
Even one leaf of spinach plus a handful of almonds can throw oxalates into your system and increase pain — and most people have no idea.
Sometimes it’s not “just getting older.”
Sometimes your histamine bucket is overflowing.
💛 Life Has Taught Me Strength — Even When I Didn’t Want the Lesson
I’ve lived through a lot of pain in my life — physical, emotional, and everything in between. Some of that pain came directly from my autoimmune conditions. APS doesn’t only affect blood flow in fingers; years ago, it caused one of the greatest heartbreaks a mother-to-be can endure.
I carried my baby boy, Matthew Ron Schist, loved him deeply, and had to say goodbye before I ever got to bring him home. That kind of loss changes you forever.
It teaches a strength you never asked for, a resilience that grows quietly in the background.
It’s part of why I fight so hard to stay grounded, purposeful, and hopeful — even now.
Where I’m At Now:
Talking to you on FB/Messenger/Video Chats has made hospital days lighter and im home now — purpose matters too. Steroids are a marvelous thing.
So now I’m re-learning how to work in a way that protects what’s hurting:
• shifting pressure to the outer edge of my left palm
• using angles that keep the nerves calm
• keeping that same calming, nourishing Cottage touch.
You will still be the focus of every session — not my injury.
This is simply a gentler, smarter way to keep doing what I love.
My plan to return to work will begin slowly:
✨ One appointment every couple of days
✨ Starting with Cottage Loyalty Members
✨ Then those with Cottage gift vouchers — including expired (you’ll be first)
✨ Then my occasional clients
It gives me something meaningful to aim for.
Something to look forward to.
But more importantly; where it's not about me...the focus is only on you 💯. You have never been a number to me and once you're part of the Cottage family; we have always only been a text away.
💛I hear you ....About “Resting”…
This isn’t about ignoring advice.
It isn’t about overworking.
It isn’t about being stubbornness.
This is about resilience.
Autoimmune disease has been part of my life for decades.
I know this body well.
Rest matters — but so does purpose.
I’ve walked through storms before — and somehow kept moving. You can be logical, emotional, overwhelmed, hopeful, and brave all at the same time.
You can’t sit still and wait for life to happen. You have to keep moving toward it. Where there’s a will, there’s always a way —
and I’ve never been one to give up. Hope is a powerful thing.
And right now, this little back to work plan of mine … is keeping my light on. I’m healing, I’m hopeful, and I’m held — by this little Cottage community I love so much. And through it all, I will keep showing you; through the art of my hands, the way a dancer does on stage, that I care.
If my circulation ever drops and the doctors decide surgery is the safest option… well, you know me — I’ll adapt. Worst case, I’ll just learn to massage with my feet. 😆 One thing about me… I always find a way. And hey — this is Shadeofgrey Cottage… the place where, if needed, I’ll glide around you & roll on your trigger areas like it’s a 1970s roller disco.
So to my long timers & Gift Voucher Holders - please text to book in Wendy 0276988226
Any questions just private message or text
Love Lady Grey ♥︎
p.s. I am pacing myself, resting alot, eating well and being looked after. thankyou ###
