![]() Thank you for taking moment to read my thoughts from tonight.... I know chronic pain isn't fun to think about, but I ask that you take just a moment to hear a few thoughts. I hope that if you're suffering with chronic pain, that this blog will help you share how you are feeling with those that don't understand. And if you don't have live in pain, that this may open your eyes to a situation you didn't know existed. Your comments are welcome & encouraged. Do you know what living with chronic pain is like?
I have to ask - have you ever woken up from the pain of your hip having been dislocated for hours? Has the weight of carrying a magazine or holding a package of markers ever dislocated your wrist? Have you ever been so exhausted by taking a shower that you spent the rest of the day recovering? Have you ever had to stop in the middle of signing your name because your fingers dislocated from the pressure of the pen? Have you ever taken a step only to hear a sickening snap, unsure if something broke this time - or if its just 'out again'? Chronic pain isn't a competition - maybe you live with migraines or have suffered from a serious car accident. Regardless of the cause - living with pain that doesn't go away is more than most people can wrap their minds around. Chronic Pain and how we're treated by Medical "Professionals"... I want to talk for a moment about how chronic pain is TREATED and how badly those of us who seek treatment are treated by medical staff. I would like to talk about how you can go into any doctor's office and you have 100% of the staff's attention and concern until you mention ONE thing - that PAIN that just won't go away. Let me be clear - I have never been diagnosed nor have I been suspected of suffering from mental illness. I was a police officer (back in my health) who had a respectable career which was never marred or disgraced. I've never been arrested, never been in any real trouble of any kind, and I have never abused or misused prescription medications - my experience with "partying" was limited to trying marijuana a handful of times at 20 years old when I worked at the Renaissance Faire. I knew early on that I wanted to work in law enforcement, and I took that seriously. And even though years later, I take powerful opiate medication EVERY day - I have to be clear: I am no more addicted to the pain medication that I am DEPENDANT upon than a diabetic is "addicted" to the insulin they take. People like myself, living with severe chronic pain KNOW that you emergency room nurses, ER doctors and our own family physicians are so cynical and burnt out that by default you don't believe ANYONE who leads off complaining of pain. We've been talked to like the scum of the earth while writhing with pain worse than you've likely ever experienced. Short of major surgery, days of undiagnosed appendicitis or a compound fracture - it's not likely you've ever had to answer questions while unable to complete your thoughts because of pain. We see the looks you give us from behind the pharmacy counter - the suspicion, the disgust. We hear your whispers from beyond the curtain. We've heard it from our own family members or friends, not to mention every medical staff member who's asked what medications we take. If, god forbid, someone HAS prescribed any controlled substance, that questions is immediately followed by a disbelieving "but WHY?". AT the first mention of ANY opioid (unless we're also dying of cancer) the suspicion abounds and our treatment immediately disintegrates. We're treated as if we're criminals, addicts, common junkies... and we hear you. We see you. And we'd like to know- what would YOUR solution be to the pain we live with? For whom do you think these medications were created? How exactly would YOU do it better and would you be willing to take our pain for 30, 90, 365 days in order to prove how you could handle it with just ice packs and ibuprophen? My Pain Management. Yes. I do take morphine. Every day - for five years, once a month, I drag myself out of the house regardless of how I feel to sit through an appointment that can last up to five hours. I'm subjected to a urine test monthly - to make sure I'm taking the prescribed medication and not selling it. They also make sure I'm not taking anything they haven't prescribed. And I have to PAY for the indignity of not being trusted - did you know that? Sure; The bottle says every 12 hours, but I'm human... occasionally I'm lucky enough to sleep too long, or I get mentally busy and I forget- and then I get to feel not only the pain. The pain that comes rolling in, in waves, but I also get to feel that distinctive sickness...I get to experience the SUDDEN, SHARP and repeated painful yawning (there goes my jaw, out again).... the ice cold sweat stinging my eyes, the nausea, the dizziness, and quickly my mind can't focus (even on the pain). My palms sweat... and that's just the beginning. But thank god I have another pill to take- and in fifteen to thirty minutes both the WORST of the pain and that awful illness will fade... that's what I remind myself each time I'm overdue for a dose. At least I have the option to take a pill and it will fade. But without that monthly appointment, and without that pill, I'm reminded, in excruciating detail- of every movement I've made in the last ten days. I'm reminded of just how many fingers, which wrist, knee and how many ribs I've dislocated and subluxated and, of course, which hip has spent more time *out* of its socket than where it belongs. Don't get me wrong - I'll still feel all of that once the pill kicks in, just a little less clearly (thankfully). It never actually goes away. We aren't all so "lucky". For hundreds of thousands of others like myself - those who have yet to be diagnosed, those who have yet to be believed, those who have yet to find a doctor willing to prescribe them any kind of long term or extended, slow-release or powerful enough pain medication... for them the relief never comes. They get to feel ALL of it, ALL of the time. Thousands of people living with the same pain that I face , will make a heartbreaking and permanent choice - often the only choice they feel they have left: many of them end their lives. I even, sadly, can understand why they make that choice. These people aren't dying from losing the fight with depression. They aren't overdosing because they lost the handle on an addiction. Please, take my word for it- living with this constant chronic 10/10 pain, in which EVERY movement you make, every breath you take, is met with excruciating pain... there are only two choices- PROPER pain management or death. There is no in between- no one is designed to live in devastating pain. And when you have NO options for controlling the pain - people resort to things you never think they would. Honest, law-abiding people will inject themselves with sketchy heroin just to get a brief break from the pain - and sometimes those people overdose and die, and then their family learns that they overdosed, and people are blaming this horrible situation on the DRUGS and not the REAL PROBLEM: Chronic pain that is being IGNORED by the entire medical industry! I know that despite the Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, I am so very lucky. I am EXTREMELY fortunate to live in a place where I have help watching my son, where I'm covered by insurance that pays for most of my medical care and medications. I know how lucky I am to have an incredible husband who fought for me and advocated for me and who attended SO MANY awful hospital stays and doctors appointments with me until we found the right team of doctors. But even with a rheumatologist, a gi, an endocrinologist, an orthopedist, an allergist, a dermatologist, a uro-gynocologist, and an oral surgeon who specializes in EDS (and pulled ALL my disintegrating teeth thanks to the EDS) plus a fantastic general practice doctor... it was only ONE specialist, after three years who was willing to write scripts that would eventually get me out of bed and keep me out of the constant rotation of hospitals - by prescribing the powerful long acting opiate pain medication that I've taken every day for five years. But I can't tell you what I might have chosen if I hadn't finally gotten relief through LEGAL and WELL REGULATED medication - it could have been heroin - it could have been suicide. I remember, each time I'm late taking a dose, each time my pain is still a 10 and I can't take anything more medication for hours for the breakthrough pain... I try to focus on the hundreds of thousands of people who DON'T have that one amazing doctor, or that incredible husband to advocate when they were too weak or too depressed and in too much pain to make just one more phone call, or to go to just one more appointment - Many people can't stomach one more visit with a doctor where they can expect to be treated like a junkie looking for a fix rather than a patient in PAIN. I know how lucky I am. What do you do when you can't get anyone to help? People like myself live with pain that makes you break out in a cold sweat, the kind of pain that you can not experience without squeezing your eyes (filled with tears) closed and focusing on your next breathe, a pain that is SO searing, so hot, so electrifying that you can't sleep for days at a time...giving rise to the term "painsomnia"... and there are *millions* of us living with this unending pain, and the *LUCKY* ones have access to medication that only *sometimes* helps. The pain NEVER fully goes away - even when we're laughing, or eating our favorite food or celebrating our birthday or a promotion or doing something unusually active (that we'll no doubt pay for later)... the pain is still, EASILY, the number one thing on our mind, no matter how hard we try to focus on whatever BETTER might be going on. And on our bad days? If you don't live with one of us, you've likely never seen or heard from us during the bad days. When we're sick or sad or heartbroken or swimming in one disaster after another...our pain just AMPLIFIES anything bad and makes it THAT. MUCH. WORSE. It's not a mystery why people with chronic pain are ending their lives in STAGGERING numbers, or why people are turning to street drugs when their pleas for relief from the pain have been ignored for months or years on end. It's inescapable. Having a "good day" can be the worst thing -because we tend to over-do it. We want to cram in everything we haven't been able to do in the last few weeks, or months, because hell, we never know when -or if- we'll ever get another "good day". And worse than overdoing it, and paying by needing days of recovery for a simple day of running errands - is the immediate judgement when we're seen out and about - god forbid we are laughing or smiling - because then it's assumed we are ALWAYS fine and that the other 99.9% of our life is a great big lie. How do you think that feels - to be told that we aren't EVER allowed to look or act well, because while sure, our friends and family want us to participate in our own lives... as soon as we do, it's assumed that we should ALWAYS be able to. It's a horrible, horrible Catch-22. In reality, chronic pain and chronic illness doesn't conveniently disappear when the weather is nice, when we're starving and need to get groceries, on our wedding day or when the baby cries and the dog needs to go out... it doesn't turn off during that one day we have off from work this week, during the vacation we planned months in advance, or on the afternoon our spouse is both off from work AND "in the mood"... it doesn't give us the evening off on the evening of the concert you got tickets to AND found a babysitter for. It's ALWAYS there. And PATIENTS with chronic pain and chronic illness don't go away just because the hospital discharges them, the ER sends them out the door, or their doctor's office says "sorry, we can't or won't prescribe you medication that can help you." Severe chronic pain is all-encompassing & it doesn't give you a break, ESPECIALLY not when you need a break the most. As a matter of fact, those are the times when the pain is at it's worst. And we aren't supposed to talk about it either. We try not to talk about it for fear of being a constant bummer - we are often downright in FEAR of the moment a doctor asks for a number to describe our pain. Do we downplay it so they don't think we're exaggerating? Do we tell the truth and risk that they assume we're hypochondriacs or just jonesing for a fix? They don't see that we turn down attending FAR more fun events than we attend or have missed so much work that our job is in danger and when we were absent and we say "I had a bad day" or "I wasn't feeling well" it WASN'T just like last week when you had the sniffles and stayed home from the office with a good book and a hot tea. When we are brave enough to tell a doctor that our pain is a 10 - it has probably BEEN a 10 for a very long time. And sadly - we're probably EXPECTING an eye-roll in response. If you work in the medical profession I have ONE request... (PLEASE understand - I know that you work in a VERY demanding and difficult line of work. I do realize how much pressure is on you NOT to treat our pain.) But PLEASE... Please take a moment with each and every patient to remember, for a moment, that not everyone who tells you they are in pain is just looking to get high. 1) Speaking for all of us in constant pain - I beg of you: PLEASE don't immediately judge us. Please don't assume that because we are crying too much, or not enough - because we are preoccupied on our phone or curled into a ball - please know that we all cope differently and just because we aren't sobbing and begging, it doesn't mean that we don't want to. Please don't leap to the conclusion that no one is *really* in pain. For many of us, it took 200% of our effort just to drag clothes onto our bodies and to get to this appointment or into your ER in the first place. At least listen to us. Please talk to our close family members, take a complete medical history, really LOOK at the big picture. Please don't just tune out the moment that you hear that we're in pain. And for those of you who don't work in the medical profession : perhaps you have a friend or family member suffering. Please try to remember that we didn't ask for this pain. We don't deserve to be treated like addicts, like people who make poor choices or who take "drugs" for fun. If we're lucky enough to HAVE access to pain medication, and we're taking it responsibly - please don't judge us. And if you're concerned, TALK to us, not about us. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to put my wrist back in and tape it there before the swelling gets any worse- typing this really did a number on me. I'm about nine hours from my next dose, so I suppose I won't be sleeping again tonight... the chest pains from my out of place ribs feel very much like a heart attack... but I'm going to try some meditation and to lie in the dark and hope I can will away the throbbing that started from dislocating my left wrist that happened from holding my cell phone while I tapped this blog post out on it. I hope you'll rest well tonight. Please keep those who can't rest because of chronic pain in your thoughts. We really DON'T want your sympathy. We just want to be treated with respect and understanding. Let me take you back to Virtua hospital in Voorhees, circa May 2011. First I have to take you back to before that - back in 2007 or so, back when I was healthy(ish) - or at least before my Crohn's disease and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and the half dozen or so disorder that go along with it (postural orthostatic tachycharcia syndrome, interstitial cystitis, mast cell activation disorder.. I could go on) - back before these had all been diagnosed and back before my son was born. What seems like forever ago, back before I got so sick, circa 2010, life was very different. Back then, I was living in Florida & I was working full time. I was a well respected police officer who had been promoted twice and who was successful and happy in my career. Back then, I kept really busy and it wasn't uncommon that I made regular DUI and narcotics arrests. Back in those days I was angry and frustrated by how easy it was for people with absolutely no medical problems to have a constant supply of oxy, codiene, xanex, dilaudid, morphine and fentanyl (patches and pops!) and how often these drugs contributed to dangerous driving, or inspired violent behavior or was the motivation behind burglaries, robberies and theft - you name it, these meds were on the streets and - it seemed - in everyone's pockets. I guess back then, I was lucky enough to believe that there was almost no one who actually NEEDED those medications, and if they DID, surely they were too sick to be out driving around or shoplifting from Sears. Many years later, when *I* was diagnosed with a host of debilitating and extremely painful conditions that cost me the career I loved, I couldn't believe that it took a great battle and several YEARS to get proper pain management - to get my pain under control. Here I am, a law abiding, honest person with integrity - I've never abused a drug in my life, and have never "partied" or done recreational drugs... and it took FOREVER to be taken seriously and treated with dignity and respect and to have my pain treated. I remember sitting in so many doctor's offices and thinking "I've been trusted to carry a gun and protect the public. I've been entrusted with the ability to place people under arrest for breaking the law, and in my career, my integrity was EVERYTHING. I never did ANYTHING to discredit myself - I was always 100% honest in my reports and when called to testify. I never trumped up charges or altered evidence, and I always made a VERY sincere effort not to hold any prejudice - I ALWAYS endeavored to treat everyone I encountered with respect, and yet, here I am, sick, and seeking answers and help...and I'm being treated like I'm at best, dishonest, and at worst - a criminal... Why is that? How could that be right? Repeated medical abuse at the hands of Virtua hospital forever destroyed my health and life. So let's talk about this, because it's important. I hope that someone who reads this working in the medical field will learn from what I've been through, and I hope other patients will use this story to be aware of what can and DOES happen all the time. I hope it will make people more aware of what chronic pain patients go through when dealing with hospitals and medical professionals. Because at the end of the day - I should have sued. I wish I would have known the extent of the damage because you only have two years in NJ - even if they destroy your life and health - you only get two years to figure out the damage and sue. In the end, their utter disregard for my health, and their refusal to treat me with respect and listen to my symptoms seriously contributed to my current condition - which can only be described as "completely and permanently disabled." Their outright medical abuse left me with PTSD. At the root of my frustration and anger with how I've been treated as a patient, I'm reminded of the WORST treatment I've ever received - a time when I was in the hospital for the umpteenth time (from interstitial cystitis, a condition related to my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, but we didn't know that back then. ). This was shortly after the birth of my son, and I had been suffering from horrible chronic pelvic pain ever since my C-section and subsequent six weeks with Mono. And so Virtua hospital kept admitting me, despite confusion over how I could be in such bad shape and yet not have a high fever -they were confused by how the symptoms kept coming back, by how I could be in so much pain, and why I wasn't just getting better. Each time, they'd admit me - stick me over and over because I'm so hard to get an IV in - and they'd begin pumping me full of Ciprofloxin and Levaquin... during most of my hospitalization between February of 2011 and July 2012, I was nearly hysterical from the bladder and pelvic and back pain. To add further insult to injury, ALL my joints felt as if they were engulfed in flames and hardening to stone- and yet every time I told the doctor and the nurses, they rolled their eyes and said it "didn't make sense". It had been more than four years since I had almost died from the Crohn's disease - I was on no regular medication except to keep my GI function in order. I had never taken pain medication for longer than 2 or 3 days - with the sole exception of my seven week brush with death back in 2007. But even then, I'd gone home, sucked up the pain, and had gone back to work with NOTHING for the pain. And yet, any time I brought up how severe my pain was to Virtua's staff- I was met with cynicism, doubt, distrust and the VERY bare minimum there was to offer by way of pain medication - despite my having been in and out of the hospital without a true diagnosis - each time they would insist upon starting with the weakest medication, even though doctors claimed to have noted that they never yet helped. When I would be discharged, I'd be told to go home and take Motrin, even though my GI doctors had been clear - It's only ever taken as little as two or three doses of Advil, Tylenol and Aspirin to cause ulceration and GI bleeding. I tried to be patient and understanding despite my pain - but I'm a person who never goes to the ER unless I'm absolutely in agony. By the time I've broken down and allowed myself to be dragged to the ER - YES - of course I've tried heating pads on my back and I've probably taken the max dose of Tylenol for the past six days. And yet, during each hospital stay, when a doctor would regrettably but eventually authorize IV morphine or dilaudid (the "big guns" of pain treatment) -the nurses would stand just outside the curtain or in the hallway chatting about what a fake I was... I heard the conversations clearly. My hearing has never been a problem. It made me embarrassed, furious and certainly didn't contribute to my getting any better. How can you trust a hospital with your care, when it's clear that they don't trust you to be honest about your condition? Eventually, during these stays, once I was finally started on regular intravenous Dilaudid, I learned to set an alarm on my phone so I knew when I could request it again - nothing seems to anger a nurse more than asking for pain medication before it's time. Requesting pain medication at all is pretty much a guarantee that you'll be treated like a burden more often than not - unless you've got cancer, or a very clear bone protruding from your body, you can expect to be treated like a burden for being in pain. How Pain Medication is Handled when You're Hospitalized A little tip for those new to being admitted; Even if you're dying, hospitals won't give you the pain medication the doctor has ordered unless you request it. And I don't mean when you first get there - I mean, EVERY single time, every 3, 6, 8 hours - whatever they've allowed for - if you don't ask, you won't get it. They'll automatically bring you ever other medication the doctor wants you to take, but you don't get pain relief unless you specifically ask. When you do ask, it takes some 30-90 minutes for the nurse to get around to your room, to ordering, recieving from the pharmacy, and then actually GETTING that medication to you...so if you've been given an order for "every three hours"- don't actually expect relief every three hours. If you don't ask, you'll never get it at all. If you are lucky enough to fall asleep, you can expect to wake up to severe pain because they won't bring it while you're asleep - and when you wake up in agony and you DO ask, just know it's going to be a while before it gets to you. When you are in pain management, one of the first things they explain to you is that pain medication works MUCH better if you take it BEFORE you need it. If you wait for the worst of the pain to return before taking your next dose, it's much harder to control your pain - but as a rule - hospital don't seem to care much about what makes sense when it comes to pain and healing, and that was DEFINATELY the case at Virtua. By the time my "every three hours" order was actually in my IV, it was ALWAYS more like 4-5 hours. And if you dare require medication at shift change - add another 45 minutes to that equation.) After learning how quickly the medication wears off and the pain would spike again, I began to document the time I was actually given all prescribed medications. I would set alarms so I wouldn't bother them before I could have it, and to remind me to ask fifteen minutes *before* my next dose was due - this would give them time to order, gather and bring the medication. I would mark off the exact time it was given so they couldn't lie to me about when I was allowed to have it again (a common issue I found among nurses)... I was clearly the only one that cared about my pain not being out of control. I was confronted at one point by a nurse who said "If you need to set an alarm to wake you up and remind you to ask for pain meds, then you must not need them" - an argument that still makes ZERO sense. Keeping track of when you're given ANY and all medications while you're in the hospital is CRUCIALLY important and incredibly responsible. If you've been admitted, and you're in pain, and you are on a regular order of pain medication, then knowing when you are even allowed to ask for your next dose seems like common sense, doesn't it? It did to me! My experiences at Virtua Hospital in Voorhees NJ PRIOR to 2011 were not good. To be clear- before the ultimate incident that I'm going to tell you about had happened - I had already been in and out of Virtua quite a bit. I had already been in and out of their hospital for several days and weeks at a time, first with a staph infection and a recurrent case of Epstein-Bar. While there, I got a horrible infection from an improperly handled IV site and had awful cellulitis that they had to keep me for a week to treat. After that, I was back and forth with what they THOUGHT was an endless stream of UTIs and bladder infections. At one one point they told me I had MRSA (A highly contagious and incurable staph infection) -they said the MRSA was in my bladder, and then they ADMITTED I could have ONLY gotten it there from a catheter. The only catheter I'd ever had was IN THEIR HOSPITAL during my c-section months earlier. It wasn't MRSA. Magically, a year later, no one could find any record of my ever having had MRSA. No one could find any test that had been performed or any culture that said I had MRSA - to the point that I was looked at like an alien when I referenced it at a subsequent ER trip. I was told I didn't have and had *never* had MRSA and that no one could find ANY record of any mention of it in my history at Virtua. It's still a mystery, but I have my theories. For months, I was admitted again and again - each time for 3-9 days, with this horrible shooting low back pain, doubled over from the burning, throbbing pelvic pain and the stabbing pain in my kidneys. Because of the "MRSA diagnosis" they refused me ANY visitors unless my visitors were FULLY suited in gowns and gloves and masks & surgical outfits from head to toe... except my newborn son who they wouldn't let see me AT ALL (regardless of the fact that in between each hospital stay I was at home with him and in constant contact with him.) They put me on lock down, meaning I had huge signs that everyone had to don protective gear and to remind all staff to give me the full on leper treatment - It very clearly seemed like this "lock down" and refusal to let my infant son visit me was punishment for being a "difficult" patient. I was sick of being treated like a leper or as if I was somehow in control of the infection that kept coming back and all the symptoms. Virtua Hospital (Voorhees location) June 2011 - The Doctor from Hell So the June 2011 incident was where things finally hit a head and became infuriating. At this point, I'd been in and out of the hospital, away from my newborn son for about a week. I was angry to have been admitted YET AGAIN and to still have no answers as to why this was happening. It became even worse when I was admitted under a female cardiologist who seemed to have ZERO interest in my case, zero tolerance for my complaints and she had NO interest in treating my pain- that much she made clear right from the beginning. I told her that I just wanted the bladder issues TREATED so that I wouldn't BE in pain. If they were allowed to put a great big RED D on your forehead for DIFFICULT PATIENT - I would absolutely have been given one on this particular stay at Virtua. ![]() So why was it deemed that I was being "difficult"? Simple: Because I was in pain, and my pain was being all but ignored and I wasn't happy about it. It was also very clear that because my diagnosis wasn't easy - it wasn't as simple as reading the results of a blood test or pointing to the broken bone on an x-ray, and so the medical staff was frustrated. They didn't seem to understand why I kept coming back - why was I not content to just stay at home and suffer? My repeated appearance, coupled with the fact that every time I showed up I was in pain and it was the fact that these nagging symptoms just wouldn't go away no matter what they threw at the infection - it was the fact that even with pain meds and with antibiotics, I was in pain and that made me a burden. That leads me back to the doctor from hell... Two days into my hospitalization, the cardiologist who was my attending (I can't remember her name unfortunately) -She ordered a test called a voiding cystogram. She said the test was to try to explain what they assumed were repeated antibiotic resistant UTIs (again, this was before the interstitial cystitis diagnosis). For anyone unfamiliar with the test; They put a catheter tube in your urethra, then inject and fill your bladder with dye. They record imagining of your pelvic region before, then while full, and then while your bladder is emptied (often more than once) - while you lay on a cold metal table and through the catheter, you pee out the dye. Sounds fun, huh? Now, I remind you, I was in god-awful pain and the hospital was reluctant to give me anything to make me comfortable. It bears mentioning that even prior to the first time I was given any kind of narcotic, when I was rushed to the hospital with a broken jaw a few years prior, doctors were shocked to find just how little effect strong medications had - I have always been notoriously been difficult to anesthetize and local anesthetics (like they use at the dentist) don't work at all or have to be given in MASSIVE quantities and still, wear off in an unbelievably short time. It's a frustrating and fairly common issue for folks with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome - that anesthesia and opioid narcotic medications just don't work very well - but remember, I was yet to be diagnosed with EDS at that time. I'd been known to require ungodly amounts of anesthesia for my size and weight (and being a fairly slim female, it's always a shock to doctors who are stunned to give me a typical dose of general anesthesia when they find me not even mildly affected long after the "normal" patient would be out like a light). The problem carries over to pain medication, but unlike anesthetic - there's no way for them to KNOW that it's not working. I don't become impaired, drowsy - I don't slur my words or seem affected at all - and that's because I'm not. A normal "emergency" dose of strong medications like morphine and Dilaudid have proven fruitless in various situations in the past - but hospital staff is weary because they hear it from addicts all the time. "The medication still isn't working" - because junkies want that high - they want more medication or a different medication. It simply doesn't matter to your average ER nurse that I just wanted to not be in horrible hellish pain, but there's a definite doubt when you're a fairly small person who requires a significantly larger dose of a controlled substance. So I had what felt like the worst UTI of my life and peeing was EXCRUCIATING. It felt like my urinary tract was SLICED and DICED inside and out, and peeing felt similar to what one would expect if one had passed a few dozen razor blades and broken glass, followed directly by a lovely blend of sriracha, bleach, vinegar and battery acid: It hurt like hell to pee. My urine samples had blood and PIECES OF TISSUE floating in it, so I didn't feel like my description was far off from what was actually happening. Not good. (Side Note: I should also explaining that I'm a horrendously SHY person when it comes to the restroom - I never even SAW the inside of a restroom through 12 years of school and 5 subsequent years in college & the police academy. Yep. Not ONE TIME. I've always had a HORRIBLE discomfort around using public restrooms and won't even pee in my own house if someone else might hear me. So you can imagine that I was already traumatized beyond belief at the mere THOUGHT of the catheter, let alone the actual test.) ![]() My thoughts: "You're going to shove a plastic tube up where I pee (which currently burns like the fire of a thousand suns), and then fill me like a water balloon (despite the fact that every time a teaspoon of urine gets to my bladder I feel like I'm gong to EXPLODE from the pressure) and then a half dozen people are going to stand around and watch me lay on a table and pee myself while it's recorded on film.... Yeah, COOL! No problem...." Their First Attempt at the Voiding Cystogram Things ALREADY start out badly when my floor nurse shows up and she's INFURIATED that I'm crying when she came to my room to put the catheter in. She walked into my room, found me sitting there silently in tears, and she turned around on her heels and walked out - Her words were "They can do it downstairs. Clearly you're going to be difficult." So.. yeah, awesome. The transport person shows up moments later -it's time for the test and I was scared & mortified and quietly sobbing when they pushed me from the room and away from my husband... but the real "fun" started when they couldn't get a catheter in me. Downstairs ... A very kind (male) nurse attempted to talk me through the catheter procedure, promising he's never been more gentle and tried to calm me down (seriously he held my hand before and tried his best to calm me) - but by the SEVENTH attempt to insert the catheter, I was practically hanging from the ceiling from the pain and NO ONE ON STAFF COULD GET THIS THING INTO ME. Not because I wouldn't hold still or because of anything I did... nope, they just "couldn't get it in". (My husband and I later discussed that my pain and swelling probably made it incredibly difficult but no one seemed to consider that...) By the eight, ninth, hell, the fifteenth attempts -as each new staff member passed me off, the attempts were *anything BUT* kind & gentle like the first guy TRIED to be. More like humiliating and barbaric. I had no less than EIGHT different nurses/radiology staff and TWO doctors TRY to put a catheter in me OVER AND OVER AND OVER and when they finally, FINALLY ("sort of" succeeded- **their words**-) the pain was so astronomically violently severe and the spasming was so unbelievably intolerable, I couldn't help but be arched up off the cold metal table where I was SCREAMING that they HAD TO STOP. The radiologist told me they couldn't and that they HAD to do the procedure- but I literally could NOT stop myself from screaming from the pain. Fists clenched, arched up off the table, half naked and humiliated and sobbing and screaming- they unceremoniously pulled it out (and NOT kindly) .... but not before a VERY bitchy nurse tried to TELL/CONVINCE ME that "Catheters aren't fun but they don't hurt THAT bad!" and repeatedly demanded that I calm down - and she's yelling this practically in my face- "CALM DOWN! Just CALM DOWN!" (Shocking that this method didn't work.) (My thoughts; "Right...cause clearly I just like the attention I'm getting!? Because I'm screaming from joy? Because I WANT to do this all over again tomorrow!?") ![]() The male nurse who had tried first then held my hand as he pushed my bed back up to my room. It was obvious he felt awful for me. I couldn't even look at him as I sobbed quietly into a pillow. He must have apologized ninety times to both my (shocked and horrified) husband and to me. "I've never not been able to get a catheter in on the first try..." he tried to explain, "I mean they aren't fun but I've never had anyone in so much pain..." He clearly was the only one who even believed how much pain I was in... he told me he'd talk to the nurse about asking for medication for the pain. So part of the problem with the way things had happened that day - we decided- was because I'd been DUE for my "every three hour shot" BEFORE that epic hellish adventure... but because of shift change and requests taking forever and busy / slow nurses... We were at six and a half hours since my last medication by the time that one measly half milligram of iv Dilaudid came. It goes without saying that it didn't actually help. My husband was left to console and calm me after that massively failed attempt. We never even GOT to the procedure part. Even if we completely ignore and forget all their bullshit about all the "fake" pain they caused... None of the staff could explain why the clearly PERFECT & competent staff couldn't seem to figure out how to get the catheter in me. Despite their REPEATEDLY shoving this dry hard plastic in and out of my already THROBBING & BURNING urethra... they blamed the failed procedure on my "IRRATIONAL" reaction to the catheter. NOT ONE PERSON (except that first male nurse) seemed to be bothered by how "impossible" it was to PUT THE CATHETER IN.... It was like I was some magical unicorn capable of being the first woman ever to voluntarily clamp my urethra shut on command... and, apparently I also had the power of a cloaking device (or maybe they gave up on asking medical staff and they were just asking random janitors and random hospital visitors to give the catheter a shot... Maybe THAT'S why they couldn't seem to find my urethra... The 2nd Attempt at the Voiding Cystogram We were informed that the next day I would be given "a shot of pain medication and something to calm me" before they again tried to do this procedure. I *wanted* them to just do general anesthesia but they assured me I had to be somewhat conscious because I had to be able to hold the dye inside me and pee when commanded (again.... suuuuure... no problem for a completely traumatized person who doesn't even go INTO public restrooms. I should absolutely be able to handle that... But never mind my discomfort and embarrassment.) The next day, they conveniently COMPLETELY ignored (AKA "Forgot") all the promises they'd made and they again sent a single nurse to come put a catheter in and to wheel me to my procedure. Thank god my husband was there to laugh *for me*, and to INSIST they give me the Dilaudid and Ativan BEFORE they make an attempt at this catheter. The nurse didn't seem to have read the notes on the previous days' events, nor did she seem to understand why we were demanding that these "silly, unnecessary and clearly overboard" medications were to be ordered - I don't care if she didn't know why the hospital was just trying to appease me for the procedure but we were NOT going to *proceed* to the CATHETER until they figured it out. So they sent her to do the catheter at 1:49pm for a scheduled 2pm test and she informed me that the entire radiology department was waiting to LEAVE and I needed to "get with the program"... Even after it was explained to the nurse what I'd been through the day before, she insisted that they would give me the meds DOWNSTAIRS and that I needed to LET HER put the catheter in so we could "get on with things." They are demanding my cooperation, and it's ridiculous. So day two was a total strike out. The Confrontation When the Second Attempt nurse gets a hold of my attending - the bitchy cardiologist was INFURIATED. She decided that I'd "refused" to cooperate to do this test. I'm not kidding. I'd been in the hospital for several days by this point - unfortunately before the doctor showed up, my husband finally *had* to leave to go deal with the work he'd been missing all week. And that's when the lovely cardiologist (My admitting/attending doctor) came to "discuss" her issues with me. The door swings open and bangs into the wall and this REALLY angry doctor comes storming into my room (the evening of the second failed attempt). I'm not kidding - that's the EXACT terminology she used. "You REFUSED to cooperate with this test and this is ridiculous." She started off by telling me that I must REALLY be enjoying my time there since I was REFUSING to cooperate and that by putting off the tests that should show them "what's wrong with me" I was "being a complete bitch" and "ridiculously high maintenance" and that she knew EXACTLY WHY I was doing it. Mind you - I was trying to nap when she came storming in. My jaw is on the floor when this "doctor" comes in and starts yelling. She went on and on - telling me that she "knew all about my little alarms" and she launched into an angry in-my-face rant about how I wasn't even a GOOD liar or a GOOD faker, and she tells me in NO uncertain terms that "NO ONE" comes into a hospital with a bladder infection and then suddenly develops 'excruciating' pain in their hips, collarbone and shoulder." (Except... that's EXACTLY what had happened... I guess I shouldn't have told them about the concerning pain that was showing up all over my body?) She demanded that I "at least come up with 'better lies' when begging for 'ridiculously strong' medications like Dilaudid for "a uti" because "normal people" who "aren't addicts" don't even take ADVIL for UTI pain and "who the hell did I think I was fooling?" She went on to explain that **NO ONE** has "mysteriously worsening joint pain" when they've been admitted for "just a UTI". While the doctor is yelling - I was silent - I was shocked and stunned and I couldn't believe it was actually happening. I'm not at ALL a crier, but tears were welling up in my eyes. My mouth hanging open, completely disbelieving that I was actually being screamed at by a doctor. Alone in that room where I'm sure she felt that no one would believe me when I complained about it later - she insulted me, cursed at me, belittled me and *repeatedly* accused me of being a drug addict just there for a "fix". She got less than a foot from my face where she told me in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that she "wasn't buying it", that she "wasn't playing my game anymore" and that my "free drugs" were "ending forever" after this test proved my urine wasn't backing up into my bladder and that I didn't even have a real kidney infection. Then she opened the door to my room, straightened out her coat, smoothed down her hair and with one final threat that I "WOULD cut my 'shit' and cooperate" with the test the next day- she left my hospital room as if nothing had happened. I was in complete shock. An Important Note about Flouroquinelone Antobiotics (Ciprofloxin, Levoquin, etc) (***IMPORTANT SIDE-NOTE: About ten months after this happened, the FDA issued a black box warning about the antibiotics I as on. The warning was added to all flouroquinelone antibiotics because the entire class of medications were determined to be EXTREMELY dangerous because it can cause spontaneous tendon rupture in people with arthritis & other conditions that cause joint inflammation. I was not diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome until about a year AFTER this nightmare occurred. EDS causes all my joints to sublux and dislocate 24/7. Because Virtua had pumped me full of Levoquin & Ciprofloxin over and over again. I was subjected to more than THIRTEEN full two & three week (IV) courses despite my CONSTANT reports of SEVERE, EXCRUCIATING pain that spread from one or two joints until ALL my joints were affected by BURNING and STABBING pain. This occurred throughout every treatment . We didn't know at the time that I had EDS or that these antibiotics were dangerous but CLEARLY no one made ANY attempt to take a detailed medical history or to explain why I was having such a painful reaction to the antibiotics. Worse - No one BELIEVED my joint pain was real during the ongoing antibiotic treatments -despite my reporting the symptoms EVERY time. I spent more than THIRTY WEEKS writhing in excruciating untreated pain *caused* by the damage from these antibiotics. My orthopedist later theorized that much of my PERMANENT low back and hip damage were a direct result of the HUGE courses of those repeated antibiotics. The pain that it caused has never gone away.***). Anyway, after berating me about what a liar & terrible fake I was, I called my husband at work and begged him to come back to protect me- isn't that nice? Reports to the patient advocate and later to hospital administration fell on completely deaf ears. I was desperate for answers and to stop being sick which is the only reason I had continued to go back there- I didn't want to start all over at a new place where they would start from scratch, but I was TRAUMATIZED and to this day, I've never received so much as an apology from Virtua. The Third Attempt at the Voiding Cystogram On the third day of attempting the voiding cystogram, my husband stood by- they first gave me the small dose of pain medication (which only barely worked for me but was certainly better than nothing), then the Ativan (which notoriously affects my memory and makes me "out of it")- but again they wanted to give me the shot and immediately try to put the catheter in and whisk me off to the test! My husband was the one who fought with them to wait at LEAST a half an hour for the medication to begin to work so that I'd be able to be more relaxed. I was told after the fact that they still had a great deal of trouble with the catheter that day, but thanks to the Ativan I have no memory of the test or the pain or any of that third day thank god. But I have never forgotten the hell they put me through, the HORRIBLE treatment I endured, the god-awful pain I was in and to this day I have medical PTSD and a strong distrust for all medical professionals - not to mention that I live with the PERMANENT damage to my joints from the Levoquin & Ciprofloxin. I will never forgive that HORRIBLE "doctor" who took am oath to "do no harm" and how she treated me- I doubt she remembers me, but I'll never forget her face OR her insults. I'm probably just one of a thousand patients she's treated like garbage because she didn't believe their pain, and that may be the saddest part of the entire thing. One of the worst, most hellish experiences of my life probably wasn't even memorable enough for her to recall a few years later. I wonder if she knows about the black box warning on those antibiotics or if she's still working there & blaming horribly ill people for their own pain, refusing to believe that anyone in a hospital bed is actually sick & suffering. I really hope not. This is the type of horrible treatment people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome come to EXPECT from doctors and hospitals. This is the kind of treatment people with chronic pain deal with MORE OFTEN THAN NOT during our journey to a diagnosis. That should shock, embarrass, disgust and INFURIATE anyone in the medical profession... but sadly, I'm sure there are MORE than a few who would read this and immediately start to explain "but we get so many junkies who come in just to get pain meds..." as if it's ACCEPTABLE to treat EVERYONE like garbage because SOME people try to play the system. As if it's okay to assume that everyone is a fake and a liar because their symptoms don't make sense, or their pain won't go away or because medication doesn't work on Patient A the way that it does for Patient B.... How sad and shocking and horrible is it that these are the "professionals" that we're supposed to trust with our lives? I was dumb enough to believe that because I'd gone to a large, well-funded and brand new area hospital, I would be treated for the illness that was making my life miserable - but instead, I was judged, ignored and in the end, the hospital and its staff did FAR more damage to me than the illness ever had. I still have serious trust issues with all of the medical staff that I interact with. I did report the situation to the Patient Advocate and the hospital's board, but nothing ever came of it. Infuriating, huh? It's something I've seen a lot lately- Fellow Zebras struggling with the frustration of an illness that is so misunderstood. Many of us will tell you (even after diagnosis) we don't understand the disorder, and almost every person with EDS has experienced doctors who don't understand our condition, or worse, who roll their eyes at our pain, or tell us in one breath that we should have our heart checked and in the next breath, that they don't understand what we're complaining about, that EDS is a "minor" condition.
I personally saw two orthopedists before finding the one who actually diagnosed me- one who told me that the "significant arthritic change" seen between the two MRIs I was given six months apart didn't tell him anything and didn't explain my severe pain, and that was it- he didn't want to see me back, he didn't believe I needed treatment for my pain and he offered no follow up... but believe it or not, the second doctor was worse; He laughed in my face. Prior to his laughter, I sat through an excrutiating appointment that my husband had driven me to. I calmly but tearfully explained how I'd gone from being a healthy active cop, loving my job despite struggling with my intolerance to the heat, and how, since my pregnancy, I could barely make it to the toilet twice a day because of how much pain I was in around the clock. I patiently explained as best I could, the severity of my pain, the constant cracking, sliding and popping of my joints. I explained how my hips. shoulders, one knee, and my fingers and toes, were dislocating around the clock from the most minor of movement. He barely said a word during this interview before my "exam". I told him that an orthopedist who no longer accepted my insurance had suggested the cause of my problems was Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and that my joint pain had severely worsened after stints in the hospital where I was treated with ciprofloxin and levoquin.... And then in one breath he dismissed my pain like I had finally reached the punchline of a long joke. "First of all," he started condescendingly- " Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is very rare. You don't have it." (Mind you, he hadn't laid a hand on me to examine me, he hadn't reviewed any of my films, nor did he take ANY family history)... But that didn't stop him. "Second - Ehlers Danlos doesn't cause ANY pain, and certainly not the "severe" pain like you are claiming to have." He made sure to stress the word CLAIMING. At this point, my mouth was hanging open from shock, my husband, thankfully with me for that appointment was speechless. Oh, but he wasn't - he went right on, "And how do you know you've dislocated something?" he chided me, clearly amused. "I wasn't made aware that you have a medical degree." The Physician's Assistant squirmed, visibly uncomfortable. He was stunned, speechless and glanced at me sympathetically between staring HARD at the floor.. The "doctor" continued to belittle me for several straight minutes, asking questions he didn't allow me to answer and quoting "facts" about how I don't have any of the "physical features of someone with EDS". (He was mistakenly listing symptoms of Marphan's Syndrome, a similar condition that, similar to Downs syndrome, has visible physical traits). He went on to tell me that with no history of heart issues (I remind you, he took no family or health history, so he had no idea I DO have a history of heart palpitations and a diagnosed murmur.)- but he was VERY SURE that I couldn't possibly have EDS. And with that, he literally dismissed me with a wave of his hand and WALKED OUT OF THE ROOM. telling me as he walked out that he had, and I quote, "Real Patients with REAL problems. You know, like broken wrists." His PA offered some consolation: He did believe my pain was real. He admitted that he knew nothing about EDS and that the "doctor" clearly didn't either. He told me that the doctor "really only deals with things like broken bones" and probably isn't the type of doctor I'd need (understatement of the year!). I've never cried in front of a doctor, but that day I did. I left frustrated, angry, and I believe that was when I first said it; "I wish I had cancer." How could anyone think or say such a thing, right? But allow me to explain. When you are told you have cancer, a doctor sits you down and gives you a serious diagnosis. They generally treat you, and your family, with compassion and understanding that the words they are telling you are about to change your entire life - and quite possibly your lifespan, and most definately, the quality of that life for some period of time. When you are diagnosed with cancer - 99% of the time, you have a disease with a name and some type of understanding. In the moment that I spoke those words - I was thinking so many things. Here is a discussion of the comparison between cancer and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I apologize for my blunt-ness, and please know that in NO WAY am I trying to claim that anyone "wishes" to have cancer, or is down-playing the devastating ways in which cancer destroys lives. EDS, though, is an ugly nightmare: It has no cure- it lasts forever, it never gets better, but it probably won't kill me. Cancer VS Ehlers Danlos Syndrome Seeing Doctors / Recieving Treatment for Pain Lifespan and Quality of Life Expectancy - With cancer, generally, you either get better or you die. One doesn't generally develop cancer, and live with it for seventy plus years. Most often after diagnosis, cancer is either treated, or, in the tragic cases, it can't be, or the treatments available aren't successful. Either way, the most common likelihood is that within a few years or diagnosis, you will either be cured, in remission, or have succumbed. Most types of cancer are either flat-out terminal or treatable - but either way, doctors usually have SOME information about what you can expect, both short-term and long-term. VS - With EDS, *if you even get a diagnosis* some SEVENTY FIVE percent of the doctors you'll see after that diagnosis will have little to no understanding of what EDS is, how it impacts its victims, how or if there are any ways treat its PLETHORA of symptoms, and many doctors flat-out insist that EDS doesn't cause pain because they can't point to it on an xray. A person with EDS will generally continue to physically deteriorate for their entire life, with new symptoms coming on, and present symptoms worsening or constantly changing. Only one kind of EDS is USUALLY terminal (type 4, vascular, which can and often does affect a person's organs. ) - the rest of us can expect to live a fairly long "normal" lifespan.... most of which will involve constant symptoms and ongoing suffering. Being Tested and Diagnosed - You can be tested definitively for cancer. Tumors can be seen on scans and x-rays and some can by physically cut away from the body. No one doubts cancer exists or dismisses it as "minor." VS. - There is no genetic test for the most common type of EDS (hyper-mobility type - or Type 3 - it can only be diagnosed by completing a physical assessment AND by taking a long, complete medical history and a complete family history. They have to look at the extensive list of symptoms and determine if you have a certain number of possible symptoms *and then* rule out all other conditions that are likely or possible to CAUSE those other conditions - so lots of expensive blood tests, scans, xrays and biopsies, all of which will, with EDS, show doctors NOTHING.. EDS can't be diagnosed on any xray, MRI or other scan, it doesn't show up on a blood test. We don't even know what gene causes the most common type. So pretty much.... good luck getting diagnosed! Seeing a Specialist - If you have cancer, you'll need to see an Oncologist. Oncologists are specialists who treat cancer and cancerous tumors - there are THOUSANDS of cancer specialists, and the United States along has THOUSANDS of hospitals as well as entire medical treatment facilities that cater to cancer patients and assisting their families. There are nonprofit pediatric cancer centers where patients and their families receive treatment free of charge through donors and there are thousands of charities raising money for the MANY types of cancer. Cancer is the single most well-funded medical research topic and a cure for cancer is the number one priority of no less than THOUSANDS of scientists. If you have cancer, you can be seen in ANY hospital or by ANY doctor, and there is NOT ONE physician on the planet who doesn't know what cancer is. VS. - If you have EDS, no one is quite sure what type of doctor should diagnose EDS, let alone treat us. Let's be real - the human body is FULL of connective-tissue, and if your connective tissue is faulty, which is what EDS is, you're going to need a doctor who can treat the symptoms you're dealing with. Wait - did I say *A* doctor? Nope: Try MANY doctors. Oh, and don't forget - you'll have to try to find one who knows what EDS even IS and it's likely they have never even have heard of EDS before you came into their office. You'll need:
I think that's most of them.... Being Understood / Your Friends & Family - If you have cancer, you will have the utmost in sympathy from anyone who finds out. Cancer patients are often given the highest degree of respect and understanding because everyone knows how serious and devastating a cancer diagnosis is. No one yells at a balding cancer patient as they walk into chemo treatments from their handicapped parking spot - and you can be sure that your friends and family will LIKELY support you in every way possible. If you look exhausted and sick and tell a perfect stranger you have Cancer, they typically understand immediately your struggle. No one will expect you to "fight through it" - and you can expect to be understood and received with compassion and care most of the time. VS. - I shared this frustration when I was at my rock bottom-i was pre-pain management, I was in worse pain than child birth, 24/7, and i couldn't take much more.... I believe my exact words were- "If I had cancer, at least there would be an end in sight, death or remission." If you have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, there's a good chance that you look fairly "normal" and many of us, especially early on, do not have any highly visible medical devices. Limping could easily be faking, and when you're not up to getting out of your pajamas, or when you park in a handicapped spot and you're under 50, you can expect to be interrogated by perfect strangers. Your family MAY support you - until you miss a big planned event or fall behind on helping around the house, and then you may find that no one REALLY believes you're ill. After all - no one can SEE broken connective tissue, so how do they KNOW you're really in pain, exhausted, and feeling horrible all of the time? I have the single most supportive husband I've ever met - and even he has occasionally suggested that I should try to "do more" or loses his patience when I've had several bad days in a row and can't keep up with things. MOST people with EDS aren't as lucky, and many of us have very little, if any, actual support from loved ones, since EDS is so misunderstood. Strangers will very likely have ZERO CLUE what EDS is - so you'll either need to give a long-winded explanation or expect that they simply won't have empathy for your situation. You can expect to hear things like "But you don't LOOK sick!" or "But yesterday you were able to go to the grocery store and lift a bag of dog food, but today you can't even get out of bed?" Seeking Treatment - Have you ever heard of a doctor saying to a cancer patient; "Sorry. Not sure who to send you to or if there's anything anyone can do for you." Hell no. If it's incurable and terminal, at least they can be informed- but many of us are left with way more questions than answers! Cancer patients were some of the first to be granted access to medical marijuana, and in all fifty states, provisions that limit the treatment of people with opiates and other powerful pain medications exempt cancer patients - after all, cancer is VERY painful for many people, and of course that pain deserves to be treated in the best way possible, right? The side-effects of cancer treatments are well-understood even by people who have never known anyone who's had it, because cancer is all over tv shows, movies and in the media. VS. - Many of our own doctors have left patients to Google "what is Ehlers Danlos Syndrome" after diagnosis, leaving us to imagine the worst, and giving us no direction or support after telling us "Hey, you have an incurable and permanent illness that will never get better and will likely get much worse." Unless you were a big fan of House, you've probably never heard Ehlers Danlos Syndrome said on television, let alone seen anyone in any sort of film who's living with it. Going to the ER? Or a new doctor? When you tell the doctor there that you have EDS, half of them will roll their eyes at you or flat out say they have never heard of it. Most won't realize that this means certain antibiotics are off-limits, or that anesthesia and pain medications likely won't work properly, among dozens of other concerns they should have about how to treat you. Many of us wish we could at LEAST have our pain validated by random strangers when we feel our worst, but the reality is that most people will have never heard of our condition or have ANY idea of the plethora of ways it negatively impacts your life. Sorry. So... What Are My Options? - Cancer at least, most types, have treatment options. Even if it's not a guarantee- there's a chance surgery, medication, radiation, chemo, could cure you. If you HAVE a treatable kind, but the treatment would be extensive, dangerous, or destroy your quality of life, you have the right to deny treatments and you can choose instead to die. Cancer that CAN be treated, often has a variety of treatments from surgeries to medications, radiation, chemotherapy, transplants, tumor removals, and many many more. When you are diagnosed with cancer, doctors make plans, follow-up appointments, surgery dates. You are offered support services, counseling, and a host of charities offer transportation, funding, even help for your living situation while you're in treatment. VS. - EDS patients have no options. When you are diagnosed with EDS, Doctors pretty much say "Okay... so, now we know what's wrong. But... why are you here? There's nothing we can really do for you." Many doctors are very hesitant to give pain medications, since many are often ineffective due to our genetic predisposition for them to not work properly - and even the medications that do work only do so for a period of time before they stop... which means that many doctors want to hold off even if your pain is EXTREMELY severe - because eventually, you'll run out of medications to try. There are NO treatments for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. The only thing they can do is try to assist with individual symptoms. I know that if many of us could give up a breast, or a limb, or even our reproductive organs or to have major brain surgery, or a very painful bone marrow transplant - we would jump at the chance to be allowed to return to an illness-free life - but none of that is possible. EDS is forever. ER Treatment? - If you have cancer, you can go to ANY hospital, and expect prompt treatment and immediate concern- even if all you are is nauseous from recent chemotherapy. You'll be admitted long enough for whatever treatment you need, and your concerns will be taken seriously. VS - If you have EDS, you will LIKELY be treated like a psych patient or a drug addict, almost four times as often as you'll have your concerns heard, your pain treated appropriately, and even when you ARE treated like a human being, there's likely not much that can be done for many of the most common symptoms. Sure, they can reset your dislocated (insert joint here) - but they will likely send you home without pain medication, and that joint may very well dislocate again before you leave the parking lot. Best of luck. :-/ Treating the Mind and Body - If you have cancer, there's a good chance that your doctors have already spoken to you about things like positive thinking, and may have sent you to a psycologist for an assesment of how you're coping with the news of your diagnosis and how you're handeling treatment. There are yoga groups and massages designed specifically for those undergoing cancer treatments and everyone agrees that spiritual health is so important. VS -If you have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, one of the most common things you'll face first is being prescribed physical therapy- yet most physical therapists want to treat us like everyone else- and things like stretching, yoga, strength training- these OFTEN only serve to WORSEN our condition and pain. Yoga and any stretching can cause pain and worsening dialocations and few doctors truly understand that Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is ALL CONSUMING and affects ALL areas of our lives, so often psycologists are only suggested if they suspect we're exaggerating or faking our symptons entirely! We can tape ourselves from head to toe, wear every splint and brace known to man, get a service dog, handicapped tags, use a wheel chair, a shower stool, but in the end- there's no treatment for EDS. There's pain management for those of us lucky enough to have doctors who care and understand- and there's coping. That's all there is for us. Sure, it may be a case of "The grass is always greener ". Sometimes, when you are suffering endless frustration, dismissal from doctors, hell, not even a real diagnosis (I'm still waiting, over three years in, for disability income- if it wasn't for family and my husband, I'd have starved to death or committed suicide by now), so I can't IMAGINE how people who are more broke and who have LESS family support are able to handle this disorder. It's no joke. Many of us suffer, day in, and day out, with severe pain that's akin to a cancer patients' suffering, and when we visit doctors, they tell us " EDS doesn't cause pain " or that were "drug seeking". If you had cancer and asked for pain relief- do you think any doctor would roll their eyes at you or claim you're not actually IN that much pain? I'm in no way trying to trivialize cancer. Like many EDSers, I'm just hoping and wishing we might be more understood and have similar hope for things to be getting better, instead of just worse. So if you hear a chronic pain patient compare their journey with that of Cancer, please try to understand... it's not that we are trying to say that EDS is WORSE than Cancer -it's just that, simply put- everyone knows what Cancer is. Even little children see commercials and know it's a big scary illness. It comes down to this - no one wants to have cancer or Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. All we want is a little more compassion and understanding of what we deal with 24/7. I wish there was a way to let people know "you should look for all these weird symptoms" and "If you're finding that all these strange things are happening to you - you MIGHT have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome" - while the EDNF site is really good, much of the symptoms listed are just medical terms,and not necessarily things people can relate to. I know there's a lot of things MANY of us have, but it doesn't seem as if doctors have 110% connected it to our EDS.... like Keratosis pilaris (red bumps on your skin on your arms and legs most often, which can appear purple when you're cold - it's common among EDSers). I'm trying to catalog all my problems from head to toe...I hope it will help my doctors (I'm planning to give it to them), plus, I'm hoping you guys reading who suffer from EDS can help do the same, so we can make a generalized "If you're noticing that you have a large number of these problems, you might want to talk to a geneticist." Here are the things I've come up with from a thorough evaluation - but this list isn't complete and I'm sure I'll be adding things as I remember them. My EDS related symptoms - from head to toe - starting with things noticed when I was a baby: As a Baby: -I was born with hips that seemed to have no natural stop - they were extremely floppy and could bend in every direction. By the time I could stand, i could and would often rotate my legs inward almost 360 degrees. I can STILL do this. -I was very ahead of my age physically. I never needed my head/neck supported as an infant bc i could hold it up myself. - as a baby, I had incredible strength and could hold my head up and do push ups. I stood at four and a half months, pulling myself up, and then walked at barely over five months. -(I've noticed a large number of these things in my son who is now four - he was incredibly ahead- crawling from the foot of our bed to the head at only 13 weeks - and the day he was born, he could lift his entire top-half into a push-up position and look ALL over the room, holding himself up for minutes. It freaked out the OBGYN so badly, he at first thought the baby he was seeing in our room WASN'T the one I'd just given birth to downstairs. He called in over a dozen people to witness the super-human baby whose head/neck and arms were SO strong. -I was always a very advanced learner. Spoke in full sentences before 18 month, was reading full books by three, and chaptered adult books by four and a half. I was offered to skip multiple grades in school (but passed to stay with my friends). -I was VERY clumsy as a kid, with horribly toed-in walking, I tripped over my own feet often and they tried to put bar-shoes on me, but had to remove them because I walked so young. -As a child, I always felt like my joints were SUPER loose, and I always felt like just sitting up /standing in line, etc was EXHAUSTING. This has only gotten much worse as I've gotten older. Head / Hair / Brain: -I'm a natural red-head with fine skin and freckles, which seems to be pretty common in EDS type-3. I've seen a LOT of red-heads. -Accelerated Hair growth (my head-hair grows nearly 1.5" a month) -Thin, fine, limp hair with a permanent part no matter what I do - my hair won't hold a perm, and resists dye. (This could be because of my red hair) -Brain-fog, short-term memory problems with functional things- like I can't remember if I did something, or WHEN I did something. It's like my body doesn't remember what it's done. HOWEVER... -I have incredible long-term memory - I can even remember many things that happened when I was just 8 months old in detail. AND - I have an Eidetic memory for things I read and see. I can flip through a magazine, and then tell you what page the razor ad was on, or almost repeat an entire article word for word. (For example: No one has EVER beat me at that bar-computer game where an image flashes, the faster you touch the screen, the faster the picture goes away, and then it asks you a bunch of questions about what you just saw - like how many spoons were on the table, or how many people were wearing sunglasses - to date, I've never gotten a single question wrong because my mind forms a complete photo almost instantly of what I saw, and I can recall it in incredible detail) - I read incredibly fast and can type over 165 wpm -ADHD symptoms that started in middle-school with impulse control issues, inability to sit still (which i still think was due to pain/discomfort/always looking for a more comfortable position - not necessarily hyperactivity) -Oddly, I've almost never had a head-ache in my life, save a few times when I was really sick and had sinus pressure. (I realize how lucky I am). Skin: -I have keratosis pilaris on my upper arms, thighs (above my knees on both upper legs) and along my jaw line. It causes the pores to get plugged up and red bumps. On my face, it causes bumps almost like acne but it's clearly not. -I have a horrible time with picking, especially at my face because I cant stand that just washing/exfoliating doesnt clear it up, so I often pick, poke, squeeze, etc. The doctor can tell me all he wants that it makes it worse, but I cant stand having anything IN my skin. -I have VERY fine blonde body-hair that's totally unnoticeable and almost invisible. As I hit my 30's, this fine peach fuzz has shown up along my jawline, my upper lip, and below and around my mouth - where the plugged skin is worse. Even though it's all but invisible, I've found that shaving it can help exfoliate the skin and does help. -I soak in Epsom salts and exfoliate with apricot-shell and loofah oatmeal soaps which help reduce the keratosis pilaris. -An illumask from Walmart REALLY helps with my skin on my face, to reduce redness, and Lotrimen (not because it's a fungus, but because the medication helps to break down the keratin plugs that form under the skin), and breaks down many of the painful lumps before they begin. I HIGHLY recommend this combination! Eyes: - I've never needed glasses, until my 30's - because my night vision and depth perception have become awful, very rapidly. - I am red/green deficient from a head injury that happened when I was playing soccer at 13. -I have floating spots that started when I was 31. Nothing is wrong with my eyes and doctors have yet to get an answer to why. It gets worse and then goes back to a minor inconvenience, but it never totally goes away. The spots seem to remain in the same spots, though sometimes they get larger and return to a small size. These floaters often make me think I'm seeing a bug or something in my vision, takes a second to remember it's just my eyes. Anesthetics / Surgery Issues: - Almost no general anesthesia works properly - it either wears off really fast or doesn't knock me out even in large doses. This has been observed by over a dozen different doctors. - I've woken up during various surgeries, and my epidural wore off in less than 20 minutes - they barely had time to finish my tubal ligation, and I was fully able to move my legs before getting to the recovery room. -Local anesthetics don't work at all- for dental procedures, I've had hundreds of shots, which sometimes numb near my eyeballs and parts of my upper face, but don't do anything for my mouth/teeth. I can feel almost all dental work if I'm awake. -Pain medication does not work normally either, I can have abnormally large doses that someone my size shouldn't metabolize so quickly or be able to handle without seeming "high" or out of it. No one in my life except my family would have ANY clue that I take 100 mg extended release morphine every 12 hrs and 4 mg dilaudid for breakthrough pain because it doesn't affect my behavior or coordination at all. Even my eyes don't dilate severely like most people's do. Mouth / Jaw / Teeth: -Jaw locking problems - pops if I open wide enough. TMJ symptoms since I was a young teen. -No dental anesthetics work or last. I've had HUNDREDS of shots of varying local anesthetics and I can still feel everything. -Dental pain seems to affect me abnormally badly to the average person. -I used to get a lot of mouth ulcers (NOT cold sores - little round open wounds inside my mouth, on my inner cheek, inside my lips, on the gums, tongue, under my tongue. Adding vitamin C to my diet seems to have worked to reduce these. My mom and son have the same problem.) -Very high pallet -Very crowded teeth with no room for all my teeth - had to have some pulled. Had braces for a few years because my teeth were crossing, and they moved immediately as soon as my retainer broke. Even though I now have some missing teeth - the teeth crowd together. -My baby teeth never fell out and had to be pulled. I got my first loose tooth at NINE. Two of my baby teeth lasted until I was twenty four. -I was missing eight adult teeth - one of my wisdom teeth and several of my other teeth both front and molars simply didn't exist. - My jaw was broken when my wisdom teeth were pulled because the doctor must have not realized that my jaw would just dislocate when he opened my mouth far... my guess is that it easily dislocated from manual manipulation, and he just opened it too far and my jaw bone cracked length-wise. It was a LONG healing process, caused huge swelling and eight weeks of being unable to open my mouth. We had to pry my teeth open with a spoon to put pain medication in - no joke. -While I was pregnant, my teeth which had NEVER had a cavity my entire life, suddenly began to crumble. Since then (I'm 33 now) - I've lost seven teeth, have two that are beyond repair, and have about a dozen untreated cavities. Fillings seem to fall out, and while root canals do kill the nerve- the teeth can't seem to last after, and regardless of caps, crowns, etc - every tooth I've had a root canal in, has completely fallen apart. - Since this list was made, I had all of my molars pulled by an oral surgeon. The only teeth I have left are thirteen of my front teeth and those are breaking and will need to be pulled as well. :-( Thyroid / Fatigue / Insomnia My thyroid was diagnosed as slightly low functioning at 29 while I was pregnant, but not low enough for medication. By 31 I was low enough to need medication. -The thyroid issues cause horrible fatigue - even when I take my medication properly, I still have issues with fatigue that's impossible to counter-act without medication (I take 30 mg Vyvanse which helps with memory-fog, short term memory, impulse control AND helps give me the energy to stay awake 12-16 hrs a day) -I have waves of insomnia that I've yet to solve. I will not sleep normally for weeks, and then be unable to do anything BUT sleep for days. Vyvanse helps immensely but has severe side effects for the first 7-10 days on it and is VERY expensive.) - Thyroid issues can and have affected my ability to have a second child, and we are now being treated for unexplained fertility issues five years after the birth of my son. Neck / Throat: - I have problems swallowing, and at times get a lump in my throat that I can't swallow. It lasts for hours, days, sometimes weeks. Doctors tell me its GERD but I've got no other symptoms of heartburn. Simply a lump that shows up for no reason and wont go away. - I was finally diagnosed with an incompetent esophageal sphincter during an endoscopy recently - so apparently some stomach acid IS corroding my throat. Spine / Back: -Horrible posture - I can't sit up straight, feet on the floor, back straight for more than 40 seconds. I slump, I put my feet up on everything, I sit with my feet tucked under me or up on the dash - on the computer, I sit like a pretzel - it's almost absurd the positions I will get into to get "comfortable" - it's like my body naturally looks to rest on itself - even when I was a police officer, at the range, I'd hold my elbows against my belly to shoot, because holding my gun up was EXHAUSTING. -I have horrible muscle spasms and knots in my back. Myofasical release massage helps IMMENSELY but only lasts 2-3 days or less because the spasms come right back. It's also really expensive, so I'm lucky if I can get a good massage once a month, sometimes less. -To date, we've tried nearly every muscle relaxer that exists and none seem to work, OR they just knock me out for 16-20 hours which isn't practical. I'm not currently taking any muscle relaxers for this reason. I now have a prescription card in NJ for medical marijuana (as of July 2015) for muscle spasms, and it does help quite a bit. -I have horrible ongoing low-back and tail-bone pain. When I was a police officer, I would shove my metal ticket book behind my low back as lumbar support in my car which helped immensely. As a child, I would sit in weird positions to avoid back pain. As an adult, l spend a LOT of time unable to get comfortable - I used to sleep curled up, now I sleep on my back, but I've yet to find a comfortable bed/surface or way to sleep that reduces my pain. A pillow between my knees DOES help. I have since gotten several Yogibo chairs and pillows, which help a lot - I even sleep in my large Yogobi couch from time to time! -MRIs have to be upright because I'm terrible claustrophobic even with meds - they show some arthritic change but arent overly helpful because nothing is actively dislocated while the MRI is being done, so it doesnt show a whole lot. The first two orthopedists completely dismissed all my pain and problems because my MRI's didn't show any bulging disks, etc. GI: -I was diagnosed with crohns in summer 2008 while i was hospitalized on and off for seven weeks where I lived at the time. I still have specific foods, meds, etc that I avoid for flareups although some things (like fried foods) are just ALWAYS a no-no, no matter what. -I've been off medication since my pregnancy in 2010 - and have been in remission since around mid 2009 though I still have have some IBS type symptoms occasionally. -I cant take anti-inflammatories or NSAIDS as well other typical mild pain relievers. (the entire list is advil, tylenol, aspirin and naproxin) because they cause horrible GI pain, cramping and bleeding, and I'm pretty sure that's what caused or at least triggered the crohns to almost kill me in 2007. - I have tried EVERY exclusion diet, and skipping gluten, dairy, citrus, meat, carbs, sugars, carbonation, etc etc etc doesn't work. I have literally done each one, for months, with NO results - none of these benefit anything. -I have regular colonoscopies to be sure the Crohns is still in remission - the only problem is that - I had severe GI slowdown and even a blockage that required surgery while on oxycodone, so I got off of it - it did help with the chronic pain, but wasn't worth the awful effects on my GI. During the time on 15mg oxycodone, I gained almost 60 lbs, destroyed my appetite and sense of taste, and was constantly battling digestive problems (related to stasis). Female Related: - I had one pregnancy and it was fairly normal in 2010. - During my pregnancy, I was off all medication (I wasn't yet on pain medication as I was diagnosed with and my EDS got much worse at the end of, and after my pregnancy). My GI slowed down naturally, so the pregnancy almost seemed to "solve" all the problems with my crohns even though I'd stopped medications (I had done remicade treatments when first diagnosed, and later was on Asacol and Dicyclomine/Bentyl). - I have horrible cramps that seem to be worse when my thyroid works properly, but I do have very short periods and very irregular cycles that have proven impossible to track. - I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis and have chronic and constant problems that feel like UTIs. I did have a problem with recurrent kidney infections which were solved with heavy IV antibiotic use - but the iv antibiotics caused permanent tendon damage (levoquin and cipro - at the time we didn't know that with EDS, I shouldn't be taking them). -The cystitis causes chronic UTI symptoms, and I take AZO about fifteen days a month to help reduce the pain/burning/urgency. It's especially bad during that time of the month and is a pain in the ass in relation to my marriage for obvious reasons (though my husband is incredibly understanding). Sometimes I take AZO as a preventative because I *know* the symptoms are coming back. -I have had awful problems with urgency, maybe I just wait too long to actually get up to go to the bathroom because of the chronic pain, but once I'm en route, its basically an emergency. - I tried to do both the bladder installations (where they put the medication right into your bladder) plus take the oral meds (elmiron and elavil),but the oral medication made me violently vomit and no adjustments help- I absolutely can't take them. The bladder installations don't last long enough to be worth the inconvenience, humiliation and constant risk of infection, plus, they leave me with the same pain and burning and I still have to take AZO. So I just live on AZO and I'm hoping it's not killing me. I THINK that's about it.... still adding to this as I think about more things... ![]() I was 29 years old when I became pregnant - the specifics of the situation are a story for another time, but at that time, I was, by all accounts, a fairly healthy and very active person. I was a police officer, I raced BMX on the weekends, I rode a motorcycle regularly and went horseback riding every Sunday morning. I had a lot of "little accidents" and bruised easily plus I suffered with an unusually weak immune system, and I had lots of small things that seemed odd for someone my age - but I never would have dreamed that I would one day be completely disabled because of something I'd had all along. It wouldn't be fair to say that being pregnant CAUSED me to become disabled, but had I not become pregnant, it's impossible to know if i would have ever been seriously affected by the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, especially to the extent that I am now. I may have gone through life just being sick more than the average person, being unable to tolerate the heat, and having an unusual number of "little issues" here and there with my health. I didn't want to have a baby- I had never wanted kids, but all of that is an entirely separate story. Regardless, by the time I was nine months pregnant, my best friend was doing the best he good to take care of me as the swelling (of my legs and feet) had gotten so bad I could barely walk and all I wanted was the baby O-U-T. When we had gone to the hospital to have the baby, my birth plan was a scheduled c-section but my baby plan was open ended... I was fairly sure my son would be headed to an adoption agency as my life-plan had never included children and I had no intention of being a single parent. During my pregnancy, I had moved to my home state of NJ to be with family - and with my best friend who I came home every other month or so to see during the ten years I'd lived in Florida. How we didn't know that we'd one day end up married neither of us can figure out in retrospect... and even though we never technically dated (about a week before our son's birth we discussed that by entering a relationship we were basically acknowledging that we were planning to get married - hell, hadn't what we'd been doing all that time we'd spent together over 14 years essentially been dating without the kissing and whatnot? Anyway, he is Kaedin's father, and he had been his daddy since our son was the size of a lima-bean growing in my belly even if we didn't actually know we'd choose in the end to become his parents. Justin also had never wanted kids, I was dead-set against them, and despite our being the best friends for fourteen years, it wasn't until I moved home pregnant and in crisis that we fell in love... right there between the morning sickness and my ever-expanding mid-section, somehow it happened. The first time he told me that he thought I was beautiful was a slightly sideways comment about how pregnant women can be really beautiful. I got what he was throwing out there... neither of us had ever been the mushy type - after all, we had been platonic besties for over a decade, but somehow it worked. And as it turned out, he is the most amazing father in the world - like I said, he was, even before we knew we'd be parenting the little munchkin. He was incredibly supportive, from foot rubs and staying up all night with me when I was feeling really awful to emotionally supporting me through the entire crisis that had caused the pregnancy in the first place. But my amazing husband (he's my husband now, he wasn't yet then) isn't what this blog is about... this is all about how my pregnancy caused me to become disabled. Despite his best effort to keep me smiling and get me comfortable, even all of the foot-rubs, and back-rubs (Not to mention and how amazing to go from scared, alone and pregnant to having the most wonderful man in the world supporting you through a rough pregnancy ALL all the emotional trauma to boot), I was still getting more and more uncomfortable. He would hold his hand on my ever-expanding belly to feel those insane kicks (and the hiccups my son had for almost an entire month before he was born!) and it was truly amazing to know how loved we both were - but still, I was in a LOT of pain by the time the 9-month mark rolled around. I hadn't gained much weight throughout the entire pregnancy (in retrospect, thank god for that!) - but all the sudden at eight months, it looked like I'd swallowed a basketball. Due to the traumatic nature of my pregnancy, sadly, there are few pictures the documented the journey, so you'll have to take my word for it, but at seven months along, I was still getting the side-eye whenever I'd park in the "expectant mothers" spot, and yet less than a month later, right around Christmas, everyone (including myself) was quite positive I would burst at any moment, possibly with twins! So when the day finally came (and yes, we made the decision to keep our son and bring him home while daddy was holding him in the middle of my tubal-ligation... the big emotional mess of a decision I'd made as a kick-back from the trauma of the pregnancy in the first place...) - I thought that all that back pain, leg pain, etc would finally end. I went home on pain-killers - for about ten days after my c-section and during that time felt pretty great. Of course, much it it was probably the fact that I was now engaged and in love with both of my amazing men... I remarkably feeling well for someone who had just had a human being ripped from their abdomen and I was actually up walking around quite a bit just hours after our son was born. I had remembered the horror stories from my sister in law who couldn't walk for days afterwards, but none of that was the case. In all reality - had my digestive system responded better to the dilaudid, I probably could have gone home that next day, but instead we got snowed in and spent six blissful days with nurses and catered meals and we all snuggled together and slept in my hospital bed. (It's a pretty weird way to start a marriage, by the way... his family was all "So... you're not coming home after work because you're at the hospital with your new baby.... um....)... but again, THAT is a whole other story. :-) ![]() Our First Family Photo (1/24/11): I was crying. Right before this photo was taken, my then fiance brought the baby over for my first look and said to me, "I think we need a car seat." Until that point, we hadn't decided that we would be parenting vs. my placing the baby for adoption as I'd been planning through my pregnancy, so this picture is incredibly special to us. I was so incredibly blown away that my best friend had fallen in love with our son so completely before I'd even had a chance to lay eyes on him. ![]() The problem wasn't my body wasn't the c-section or the recovery afterwards, what actually "upset" my faulty collagen had started long before the surgery as my body was moving through the stages of pregnancy and preparing for labor. All the low-back pain and hip problems I'd been writing off as pregnancy-related weren't actually -they were foreshadowing. The problem began to show itself in the weeks after the birth when the low-back pain from the pregnancy (it had crept up right around the eighth month) had never gone away... by early summer it had gotten so bad I was at my GP asking for pain medication and MRI and x-rays. Disappointing and confused by "minor arthritic change" being the only notable thing, I couldn't understand why my pain was only getting worse. And spreading. It seemed like my knees, my ankles, my shoulders... one at a time, every joint in my body was starting to slip out of place, to sit funny - I'd dislocate a hip during sex (sorry for the TMI, but I promise, no one was more traumatized than we were!) - I'd step down a step only to find that my ankle had slipped out of place and end up in a heap on the ground.... something was very wrong and it wasn't related to my now months-gone pregnancy. By now my son was standing on his own, and I was becoming less and less able to stand on my own, even sitting up for long periods was excruciating. While he was having tummy time, all I could do was lay flat on my back on a heating pad, taking twice the recommended dosage of Advil and nothing was helping. Finally, almost a year after my son's birth- after various referrals and two orthopedists who told me that nothing was horribly wrong with my back, I saw an orthopedist who was able to give me some REAL answers. (For the record, my husband had already come to the right conclusion) But for me, this was a real specialist, who I really trusted, who could explain what no one else had figured out: I have Ehlers-Danlos Sydrome, Type III. Otherwise known as Hyper Mobility Syndrome, it's a genetic condition that causes faulty collagen, which is otherwise known as the glue that holds us all together. So here I was, feeling as if I was coming apart at the seams... and I really WAS! As upsetting as it is to have a genetic disorder and no hope for a cure - everyone I know who has been diagnosed to this day is just glad that they finally have answers. Being told that it's not real, that it's all in your head - it's demeaning, it's downright abusive. To have doctor after doctor treat you as if you are a head-case while your body is being racked with such severe pain that your quality of life is becoming non existent, you just don't understand what that's like until you're living it. I was just glad to have something I could go home and Google, to read about, to learn about, to learn to cope. The first stage of accepting this condition is knowing you have it - so at least I had that. And for the record, I really have to thank my orthopedist Dr. Levy from Sprains Strains and Fractures in Cherry Hill, NJ because he's an amazing person and he really may well have saved my life, because up until the point where I started getting proper treatment for this incredibly painful condition, it was not looking good for me. I spent the first few days after the diagnosis in tears- at first I was terrified I had Type 4 (Vascular EDS, which is often deadly) - I do not, I have type III. But still -this has no cure. It's a lifetime of pain. The dislocations will never go away, they will never stop - surgery won't help. This is a condition you manage and learn to live with - but it's not something that you can change because it's faulty genetics. And worse... I could have passed it to my son. But now you know the end of the story, and you didn't really find out HOW I went from being a healthy happy 130 lb police officer to a 185 lb disabled woman with a three year old son... so let me explain how pregnancy (and later, an inept moron of a doctor at Virtua Hospital in Voorhees) destroyed my body... (but first let me say... even had I known that this would be the outcome... we wouldn't trade our son for the world.) ![]() HOW PREGNANCY CAUSES EDS SYMPTOMS TO GO AWRY ... The relaxin hormone floods a woman's body at the end of pregnancy to prepare her hips and pelvis for birth - unfortunately that hormone loosens up ALL your joints, not just your hips and pelvis. A healthy women's body will slowly tighten back up, and her lax joints from pregnancy hormones will slowly go back into their normal place after labor as the healthy collagen does it's job after the pregnancy is over. Unfortunately, my defective collagen couldn't help my body go back to where everything belonged. The pregnancy set me up for a lifetime of joint dislocations each and every time I move, even ever-so-slightly, the wrong way. If I reach for something in front of my, my shoulder can drop out of the socket. When I roll over in my sleep, my hip often slides in and out of socket more times than you flip your pillow to get to the cool side. Every joint in my body regularly dislocates, except oddly, my elbows, which seem to have remained free from the effects of my hyper-mobility. Everything else in my body is affected; my jaw broke during surgery to pull my wisdom teeth, my fingers dislocate from typing, writing with a pencil is physically painful, my wrists snap from picking up my cell phone to look at my text messages, toes slide out of socket and are so cramped and painful the only way to put them back in place is to get on my feet and apply pressure to them with my whole body to "re-set" them into place, my ankles drop if I try to run (that's a joke - trust me, there's no running going on here!), my knees dislocate from staying bent on an airplane or at a movie, and more than anything, my hips. My hips are why I walk funny - they are why I'm in horrible pain as i type this blog, they are why I can't sleep, why my back is constantly a huge tangle of painful knots. My hips are the bane of my existence... That's what the collagen disorder, EDS Type-III is, after-all. As a child, they put these awful bar-shoes on my feet to try to stop me from "toe-ing in" as they called it. Doctors told my parents not to worry and that I'd "outgrow it" and not one specialist was concerned that I can rotate my feet well over 180 degrees inward, even walking with my feet facing forward and backward at once. Here's a photo to illustrate. And here's one that shows what I can do standing up... It's quite typical for woman (and their doctors) to only put together all the puzzle-pieces of a lifetime of "little things" together after a pregnancy, when all the damage done by the relaxin begins to cause chronic pain. And that's what happened to me. HOW LEVOQUIN AND CIPROFLOXIN CAUSED ME PERMANENT INJURY AND A LIFETIME OF PAIN... One of the biggest things that contributed to my life-long battle with chronic-illness (in addition to the pregnancy that triggered the onset of severe symptoms) - was 100% the fault of Virtua Hospital and the HORRENDOUS admitting doctor who was put in charge of my care there. (*Please see the foot-note to this story) That's a story for another time, but I promise I'll tell it. There is some debate about the facts - but this we know for sure: Shortly after my son's birth my husband and I both were diagnosed with Mono (well, to be fair, he had Mono, I was battling with the Epstein-Barr virus as I have immune system issues we didn't yet know about). My husband became jaundiced and was hospitalized, I had an IV infiltrate and and had a serious issue with cellulitis I began to battle with nearly permanent urinary tract infections and kidney infection symptoms. I had sharp pelvic and abdominal pain, pain in my low back near my kidneys, burning and the constant feeling of needing to pee.... it was never-ending and so severe that I went to the ER nearly a dozen times because absolutely nothing would reduce the pain short of IV morphine or dilaudid. It became unbelievably bad during my periods, after sex, after bathing, swimming... I did everything possible to avoid UTI's - literally followed the handbook to a T - including giving up sex for quite a while despite the fact that I was newly married and very much in love. Nothing I did helped. I was admitted to Virtua Hospital more than nine times in the year after my son was born, and several more times in early 2012. During the first few hospitalizations, I was told that I had MRSA in my kidneys... MRSA is a HIGHLY infectious staph infection. It HAD to have been given to me during a cathaterization... and up until that point I'd had exactly ONE catheter in my entire life: DURING MY C-SECTION... at Virtua Hospital. Isn't that nice? I was treated like a bio-hazard. Everyone who came into my room suited up as if I was an E-Bola patient and even friends and family were supposed to wear gowns, masks and gloves to come see me. My newborn child who I'd care for at home, skin to skin, I was told was not allowed to visit me in the hospital (they got WW-III about that, and I won, btw.) I missed my own baby shower (it was after my son's birth) because I was in the hospital, and I was in quarantine, so they wouldn't even let me guests visit me. So the onslaught of antibiotics started. They pumped me full of antibiotics and I never began to feel better - only worse. The only thing that ever seemed to help the UTI symptoms was over the counter AZO (which I still use to this day on a regular basis) - even the various antibiotics didn't keep the infections at bay for more than a week or two. Some of my hospitalizations were LITERALLY just days after I'd been released. I was repeatedly treated with two strong antibiotics: Levoquin, and Ciprofloxin. Each time I would get a bag of IV antibiotics, the pain would come. I felt as if they were pumping wet cement into my body and it felt as if every joint was hardening to a solid. I felt like I couldn't move - the fire-y pain that shot through my veins was worse than the broken jaw, worse than third degree burns, WAY worse than the c-section, even worse than the bowel impaction and intestinal tears I'd survived... it was HELL. I reported to the nurses my horrible pain. Occasionally a doctor would up my dilaudid from every 6 hours to 4, or add Vicodin on top of my morphine, but nothing was ACTUALLY helping. I was just getting sicker and no one knew why. I'll tell you another time about the world war that went on between the doctors and I, but suffice to say that if a hospital can't explain your symptoms, they have two responses... 1) They'll tell you that they don't believe you're actually sick because your symptoms "don't make sense" or because nothing you're complaining of is showing up on their tests.... and they'll discharge you, even if you have VISIBLE symptoms, such as bacteria or an infection they can confirm.... they'll discharge you, after having you on anti-inflammatory medications, pain medications, antibiotics, probiotics and ran a whole bunch of tests.... and they'll send you home with NOTHING. The hospital will flat out tell you that they don't know the answer and that they "can't keep you here forever" and will simply send you home with NO answers. 2) They'll imply that perhaps you have a mental illness, that the pain is in your mind, or worse, that you are simply there seeking pain medications because you are a drug addict. I repeatedly told the doctor after being trearted with antibiotics that I was experiencing SEVERE and worsening pain... and in response, the admitting doctor flat out accused me of "drug-seeking behavior" claiming that my report of pain made NO sense and COULDN'T be true. (*Please see the foot note below about the serious affects of the Fluoroquinolone family of antibiotics.) *I was accused of this once - by the same idiot doctor I mentioned above and in the blog post (here). Why? Because at the time, in her words "No one being treated for a kidney infection SUDDENLY has sharp severe pain in her hip, shoulder and lower back. It makes no sense." Seven months later, a black-box warning was added to the Fluoroquinolone family of antibiotics- including LEVOQUIN and CIPROFLOXIN. Read more about this in the footnote or (here). Basically what it comes down to is this- SEVERE PAIN as a side-effect of those antibiotics is a sign that something is VERY very wrong. And she continued to treat me with those same drugs, over and over and over, all the while, claiming that I was "over reporting" my pain and wasn't being truthful. In the end, her ignorance and ignoring my reports of pain, ended in PERMANENT damage to my joints, throughout my entire body, that I now have to live with forever. . ** Footnote Regarding Fluoroquinolone Antibiotic **
Approximately 7-9 months after I was accused of lying when I reported severe pain during and after IV antibiotic treatments - the FDA released new Black Box warnings about the SERIOUS dangers associated with these antibiotics. Here's the information from the FDA. Warning: Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics May Cause Permanent Nerve Damage. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required the drug labels and Medication Guides for all fluoroquinolone antibacterial drugs be updated to better describe the serious side effect of peripheral neuropathy. This serious nerve damage potentially caused by fluoroquinolones may occur soon after these drugs are taken and may be permanent... Peripheral neuropathy is nerve damage in the arms and/or legs, characterized by “pain, burning, tingling, numbness, weakness, or a change in sensation to light touch, pain or temperature, or sense of body position.” Due to their tremendous health risks, fluoroquinolones should be reserved for treating serious bacterial infections that won’t respond to any other treatment, when the patient is made fully aware of the potential for serious adverse events. Instead, they’re often inappropriately prescribed for mild conditions like sinus, urinary tract and ear infections. In fact, fluoroquinolones are among the most commonly prescribed antibiotics in the United States. I highly recommend you take pause before filling a prescription for these drugs, especially if you have a “routine infection” that has not been treated by other agents that have a safer side effect profile. You should not expose yourself to this degree of risk unnecessarily! The dangerousness of fluoroquinolones definitely warrants some serious discourse with your health care provider about whether they are really necessary, versus safer treatment options. |
AuthorLife at 34, as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend... with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, nothing is easy..but it *IS* worth it. Archives
November 2019
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