drama queen

OMG, do I feel like such a drama queen today. Last week I noticed that the ends of my fingers, just under the distal end of my finger nails, had taken on this strange orange-ish hue. It struck me as odd because the bottom half of my nail beds (beginning at the cuticle) looked normal, but the top half had become a dark salmony-orange, particularly on the index, middle, and ring fingers of both hands, somewhat symmetrically. I remembered reading that nail color can sometimes be indicative of other health problems going on in the body, and since having passed the 40-year-old mark I find that I pay more attention to what my body might be trying to tell me, so I turned to the internet for a bit of research to see what I could find. Upon reading about many of the horrific nail afflictions that do exist (and thanking God that none of those matched my particular problem), I did stumble upon this one set of symptoms, referred to as "half and half nails" (half pink/half white), which sounded frighteningly similar to mine (as far as the color markings), and of which the specific cause is renal failure! (yikes!) Now, I'm truly not a hypochondriac sort of person (turning comments OFF now ;) and in fact, I seldom ever get sick at all (knock wood), but reading this sort of got me to worrying. So throughout the weekend I kept staring at my fingers and racking my brain trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for this (and comparing my nails to anyone else who would let me see theirs ;), and although I have no other signs of renal failure, this tiny bit of fear kept creeping into the back of my mind. (And in case you're wondering, no, I don't wear nail polish... ever...so I knew it wasn't that.) Anyway, imagine my relief today when I finally realized the likely cause: I recently started using a new skincare product, which just so happens to contain Vitamin C as the main ingredient. I had been using it during the day but recently switched to using it at night. So it makes sense that while sleeping, I generally have one hand or the other curled up around my pillow, which would place my fingers laying right up against my cheek. (Which explains why my thumbs were showing no sign of the orange-ness.) Anyway, I'm relieved that the mystery is solved, and I don't mind the orange color so much now that I know why it's there, but I have to chuckle a bit at how concerned this had me over the weekend. Oh well, I suppose it's better to be vigilant than to have something serious sneak up on me, huh?