By ketad on Sunday, June 09, 2002 - 02:19 pm:

Hi!
I've been surfing this board for a while now, but this is my first contribution. I grew up knowing I had double jointed shoulders, but thought nothing of them until I hit puberty. Growing was incredibly painful for me and with it came recognition of joint laxity all over my body. I was unaware of the fact until I began to crack and pop all over and had problems with constant subluxing of certain joints. With all of this came a drastic downhill turn in my health. I went from a healthy girl in JROTC in highschool to being pain ridden and always tired and weak. All of my joints are unstable and my SI causes me a lot of back problems.
This drastic change alarmed my mother and we got in at a PCP. He told me I was depressed, had marfanoid features and signed me up for some tests, and sent me to physical therapy. Since then all tests have ruled out 'marfanoid features' (symptoms, but not the syndrome), the 'depression meds' have done little more than make me a physical wreck with side affects, and therapy has done nothing. Now I'm signed up to go to a rheumie in August. What will a rheumie do different? If pain meds don't work, all she'll be able to do is just diagnose Hypermobility Syndrome.
Any and all thoughts and help are appreciated!!!