Scleroderma 101, so no one has to actually google it :)

Scleroderma is a widespread connective tissue disease that involves changes in the skin, blood vessels, muscles, and internal organs

Skin symptoms may include:

• Blanching, blueness, or redness of fingers and toes in response to heat and cold (Raynaud's phenomenon)
• Hair loss
• Skin hardness
• Skin is abnormally dark or light
• Skin thickening and shiny hands and forearm
• Small white lumps beneath the skin
• Tight and mask-like facial skin
• Ulcerations on fingertips or toes

Bone and muscle symptoms may include:

• Joint pain
• Numbness and pain in the feet
• Pain, stiffness, and swelling of fingers and joints
• Wrist pain

Breathing problems may include:

• Dry Cough
• Shortness of breath
• Wheezing

It also causes your esophagus to slowly constrict over time to the point where you can't even swallow the smallest Tylenol pill. So you have to remind your doctors that all your meds need to be in liquid form, and you can only take chewable aspirin for pain.

In most patients, the disease slowly gets worse. People who only have skin involvement have a better outlook. Death may occur from gastrointestinal, heart, kidney, or lung involvement.

One type of scleroderma, called localized scleroderma, involves only problems of the skin of the hands and face. It gets worse very slowly and usually does not affect any other parts of the body.

Systemic scleroderma can involve many organs in the body. In some people, it will progress slowly and not involve any organs in the body. In others, organs such as the lungs, kidneys, intestines, gallbladder, and heart become involved.

For some, symptoms and problems develop quickly over the first few years, and continue to worsen. Others get worse much more slowly. Problems with the lungs are the most common cause of death in patients with scleroderma.

i have the systemic kind. it sucks. The end.