What was the matter with this old woman's hands?

When I was about 15, the church Young People’s leader signed us all up to spend a Saturday evening at the Sunshine Rest Home. Our task was to facilitate an evening of games for the residents—simple activities that mentally and physically decrepit old people could play in a spirit of mild competition and fun.

My station involved a simple game of suspending a wooden clothespin (the old-fashioned kind without a spring) over a narrow-necked glass milk bottle and dropping it in. That was a real challenge for these folks.

There was one old woman I’ll never forget. Her hands didn’t work at all. They were limp and very red, puffy, almost shapeless, and they hung from her wrists like a pair of rubber gloves half filled with water. The only way she could hold a clothespin was to press it between her two wristbones. As the game mistress for that station, it was up to me to pick up the clothespin and hold it where she could kind of clamp it between her wrists while her hands hung down and wobbled like dead things.

As a healthy adolescent who had never been exposed to much of anything in the way of illness or disability, I found this very disturbing.

What I want to know now is: what was wrong with her hands? or rather, what kind of disease or disorder can cause the condition that I observed?