Scleroderma

Your skin becomes denser, firmer, unyielding. Fingers that can no longer fully open. A face losing its mobility. Tissue contracting as if wanting to brace against something that is no longer there — or perhaps was never really there. Scleroderma literally translates as "hard skin," and that is exactly what happens: connective tissue hardens, at the surface, often also in the depths, in the esophagus, the lungs, the blood vessels.

Medicine understands scleroderma as an autoimmune disease: the immune system turns against the body's own tissue and sets in motion processes that lead to progressive hardening. Why the system reacts this way has not yet been fully decoded biologically.