ARTHRITIS AND CHRONIC PAIN SYNDROME
You may recall that last time I mentioned hypermobility. I explained that some of my joints are more flexible than others, meaning I'm able to put myself into near pretzel like positions, joints allowing. For example, I may be able to bend backwards to 90 degrees, but a malformation of my hip socket and femoral avulsion means I cannot do the splits. I know, I've tried. Also, I have the FEAR, meaning I never have been able to hurl myself across a floor mat doing all sorts of weird and wonderful moves. Or on ice, but that accident is another story.
Most people develop osteoarthritis as they start to get older in life, due to the use and pressure on the joints. Aside from Juvenile and Rheumatoid arthritis, which are separate conditions, those of use with hypermobility start to develop arthritis far earlier than that. If you experience injuries, the onset can be faster. My first experience of arthritic symptoms in my knees was aged 18, at a political conference. This, you understand, was on top of the various knee and ligament injuries I had been experiencing since I was 11. At 18, I was told all high impact sports were out. Permanently, if I did not want to see significant deterioration in my knee joints. Goodbye ladies' rugby. Still, that, plus late orthotics, knee braces for the gym and my knees have been Ok since, although they do have a tendency to pseudo lock. Normally when I'm asleep. Excruciating.
My back has been a bother since I was 12 and fell off a swing, landing badly on my coccyx. I was also told around this time that my body is "short" by about 2 inches, due to a mild scoliosis. Despite this, I was extremely flexible, however I was apparently slipping discs in my neck from quite early on. As a result, I have slipped discs and three MRIs have shown that I have facet arthropathy, AKA spinal arthritis. The spaces for the nerves are being compromised by growing bone cells, which is what happens in arthritic conditions. It's mostly stable, but means I can have a lot of pain. I'm expecting my shoulder, wrists and ankles to develop symptoms at some point and I'm pretty sure at least my right hip, thanks to a bad fall in a bike accident, may display symptoms worse than the current pain. Leading into this is Chronic Pain: the exact causes of it are not known, but people with connective tissue disorders, like me, or those who experience awful accidents and their pain relief isn't well managed go on to develop the condition, in short: we experience pain in parts of the body where there is no reason for it. Most pain relief isn't that effective, because there's no cause. It's a response by the nervous system. I've had a lot of discussions with orthopaedic surgeons, specialist nurses and so on and I'm fairly convinced that one of the reasons the condition is so prevalent in propel like me is because of the way our bodies operate: we do normal things or accidentally push it too far, sustain injury and because the mechanism of correctly behaving ligaments etc don't function, the body decides a preventative pain function works better, except that this is not funny. You don't get warning flashes of pain: nope. You get this 24 hours a day, seven days a week, don't sleep because of positional discomfort meaning you need to move every hour or so and the painkillers you need to simply dampen down the responses are so strong you end up on more meds to control the side effects. What I have is separate from Fibromyalgia and Polymyalgia, which are also pain conditions, however they are all absolutely b*stards to live with. Mine is mostly stable, but my hip and knee have been playing up. After a bout of depression and stress, I had a flare of CPS. I am now prescribed extremely strong painkillers for use BD, except I react oddly to them in that I can't sleep. So once a day for me. If it flares up, it's not just sore: because it affects the nervous system, I can experience muscle weakness, loss of or altered sensation, pain if I walk too far and my balance can go off. I now have a portable stick and my own crutches. Sometimes I need them. Because if I didn't have them, I'd fall over. No joke.
Need a tea break? As this went on a bit longer, I have decided to stop here for the day. It's too depressing for words.
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