HANDS

I have a friend who is quite a long way into dementia. One of the things he asks over and over again is why he’s got brown spots on the backs of his hands. I give him an answer and we count the spots. And then we do it again.

In a way, I know how he feels. I remember noticing these brown spots on my hands in my 50s and counting it as a sign of ageing. It seemed as though one day they were blemish-less and the next day these splotches had arrived, never to disappear again.

I see from a quick Googling that these common brown spots arrive because of sun exposure or lack of Vitamin B12, and can respond topically to lemon juice or Vitamin E. They are not life threatening except in the general sense that they signify ordinary ageing and are often called liver spots but have nothing to do with the functioning of the liver. (I am told by a GP friend that they can appear simply from an accumulation of waste products in the body, which leaves me with the hilarious image of poo appearing as brown spots on my hands.) Cancerous spots on the skin look different – apparently.

Apart from looking at my face every day in the mirror, my hands (like now, clicking at the keyboard) are in my constant gaze. I have noticed recently that the ring I wear swivels in a way that it didn’t do before: my fingers grow thin whilst the knuckles thicken to prevent said ring from falling off.

I also think my hands are paler, as are my feet: not massively so yet, but it’s there as another marker. I imagine this is something to do with the circulation to the body’s extremities slowing down with age. (Ah yes, Google tells me that the skin gets paler, thinner and more translucent with age. Not so many red blood corpuscles.)

I now have my parents’ hands: the bulging blue veins and puckered skin that I can pick up between my fingers, no longer elastic and apparently no longer attached to the flesh underneath. The celebrities who have Botox don’t seem to be able to disguise their hands either and can look as though they have claw-like hands compared to their smooth faces. I am making this sound more grotesque than it is, but I am trying to be dispassionate. It is Halloween today – I have witches on my mind.

And just one more thing: I have an arthritic thumb – just one, and the pain comes and goes. A couple of years ago I had the kind of massage that hurts whilst it’s happening and feels great when it stops, and the masseur had a go at the arthritic thumb. Whilst agony at the time, I had no more pain for months afterwards.

So that’s it with my hands. The nails seem to be strong and white, not yellow yet. I can watch my ageing day by day just by noticing my hands in front of me. In a strange way, I feel grateful to these hands for all they’ve done in the 70-plus years of my life: beasts of burden still at the washing up sink, channels of love for the grandchildren, eloquent purveyors of mood in conversation, occasional creators of something worth looking at. Most of all they are mine and nobody else’s, showing me my life’s journey as they will eventually show my death.