70-year-old New Yorker’s skin turns purple and leads to a distressing diagnosis.

For one woman in upstate New York, her health had been her biggest gift from God. But one morning, things took a very dark turn as she awoke to find strange, purple, web-like welts covering her entire back.

According to reports from the Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, where the 70-year-old woman received treatment, she suffers from a rare skin condition called Livedo Reticularis. Based on studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine, this condition occurs when the skin is exposed to freezing temperatures. The extreme cold causes the blood vessels to clot & spasm, blocking proper blood circulation. This leads to the blood vessels underneath the surface of the skin, turning purple and becoming visible through the skin. It is these vessels that cause the web-like patterns over the body.

Images in Clinical Medicine: Livedo Reticularis in Cold Agglutinin Disease https://t.co/iBZGpz8a7Y pic.twitter.com/3FkAdJCcMC

— NEJM (@NEJM) September 27, 2019

When further investigated, attending physicians Dr. Anush Patel and Dr. Konika Sharma diagnosed that the 70-year-old patient suffers from a rare autoimmune condition called Cold Agglutinin Disease, where the body’s own immune system attacks and destroys its red blood cells. This condition increased her vulnerability to Livedo Reticularis.

While matters looked scary for a while, thanks to God, things soon turned better. The woman was hospitalized, and blood transfusions were given over the course of the week. Once her body was back to normal temperature, the purple welts disappeared.