Zane Grey’s Riders of The Purple Sage may have been a western with cowboys, cattle rustlers and Indians racing across the plains shooting up the land and each other, but the purple that rages across my thighs comes from the northeast. It is in that geographic region where I reside in all my violet glory. We are all agreed that purple and/or violet is a beautiful color for sunsets, Liz Taylor’s eyes, drapes flowers or even a dress. That’s a far cry, however, from accepting it as a viable flesh tone!
I don’t even know how it all happened anyway. The last thing I remember (either from the southwest or the northeast) was that I was about nineteen years old. Then one night I went to sleep. I woke up the next day to find my middle-aged self with purple and pink lines running across my legs, with no particular destination in mind. I told them to leave, but they wouldn’t listen. You would think I had been talking to a group of teenagers who had the stereo turned up too loud.
The truth about these spider veins is that they are here and so am I. ("Maybe millions of people go by.") Is there a way for us to live in some sort of symbiotic harmony? Not on your life! It’s me against them. They have to go go until they are gone gone. The really big problem (even bigger than Ed Sullivan’s really big show) is that these veins come back even after they’ve been zapped, not taking no for an answer. Even the doctor who zapped more than a few of mine told me that to remove them was like trying to plug up Niagara Falls. They don’t return to the same spot, but they come back just the same, only to taunt and clash with whatever outfit I had in mind to wear.
Cover them up, you say. Don’t look at them! I agree. That does work for a while, but spider veins can still leave one with no desire to sing in the shower or the rain. (Could be both places at the same time if careful attention to locale is not paid.) Unfortunately, in the case of spider veins, out of sight is not out of mind. Nor is it true that absence of spider veins makes one’s heart grow fonder of them. None of the old proverbs, in fact, can offer any consolation at all as to their damn intrusion into every day life. (This may be because at the time these homey little pearls of wisdom were written down for posterity women didn’t live long enough to develop them.)
 Words of advice rather than wisdom prevails. Zap them out until you drop or can’t afford it, whichever comes first. (It will probably be the latter. You can trust me on that!) Put the whole nightmare on a credit card, as most insurance policies won’t cover cosmetic surgery. Make sure, however, that you do not use a purple-colored credit card because the symbolism will be too acute and it will be very upsetting.) I do guarantee that if the veins are in a prominent spot it will make you feel better not to have to look at them. It’s like washing that man right out of your hair, or something like that.
I have submitted to the painless procedure of saline injection, vitamin C and three days of wearing support hose four or five times myself. I only stopped because when the little buggers decided to come back it was on a lower portion of my calf. I almost felt they had an ego all their own and that they seemed to say: "You can’t get rid of us! There’s no place to hide!" I don’t know why they returned in a different spot with a different configuration, but I do know that I don’t want to feel obligated to match my shoes and bag with my flesh tone in a few years. It’s bad enough I have to be careful not to clash with everything else!
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Spiders And Other Veins
