Cold Hands, Warm Heart?

Years ago, I realised that something was wrong with the blood flow in my hands. My doctor pretended I was making it all up at first. A few years later he gave up placated me with a couple of unnecessary, painful procedures on my hands, only to find that neither of them worked (surprise!).

I continued to go to see him because of this problem. I had excruciating pain, and my hands could never get warm enough no matter how thick my gloves were. Eventually, when he realised he didn't know what was wrong, he pretended it was all in my head. Yes! he pretended I was pretending. (If you close your eyes, it will all go away - right?)  I made use of hand warmers and other artificial methods to keep myself warm in the winter months. I needed to wear fingerless gloves even indoors, to make the coldness just bearable.

It was 7 years later until I found a doctor who told me I had thoracic outlet syndrome. All along the problem was in my shoulder - not in my hands. I would later have a terribly painful surgery to cut the bone which was growing from my shoulder into my chest. However, by then so many nerve endings had been damaged, the surgery couldn't correct anything - it could only stop it from getting worse. So I'm still left with shoulder pains and icy hands - minus chest-growing bone.

I spend a lot of time looking for and collecting all types of handwarmers. Of course, because my hands are perpetually cold, other parts of my body follow suit. Over the years, I've used many types of warmers. Some I've liked and others - not so much. Nowadays I stick with the disposable type. I'd rather use something that I can make use of again, but I find that many of these warmers can be a bit tricky to use and not long-lasting enough. Then you have to re-heat them to be able to use them again.

Lately, I've found a website that sells hand warmers at half the price I pay for them here in the UK (and I thought the ones I used to get were cheap). I only came across them by accident too! I've noticed that they also do Foot Warmers and Toasti Toes but I don't need these half as much.

Has anyone else got this problem of cold hands? If so, what have you found to be the best way to deal with it?