My Journey with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome

"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."

- Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Clicking Clavicle

My left shoulder continues to be unstable. I'm trying to really hammer my shoulder these next few weeks so that we can see if PT can and would be effective enough to keep my shoulder in place and avoid an operative fix. My shoulder doesn't seem to be getting much stronger. I've been getting more discomfort after doing exercises, so I'm now just focusing on a few simple exercises which will hopefully avoid irritating my shoulder more.

Ever since my dislocation (about 3 weeks ago) it felt like my clavicle was moving around, but since my shoulder was so generally sore it was hard for me to tell exactly what was going on. Now that my shoulder has calmed down from the trauma of a dislocation, it's more clear; my clavicle is moving. Yesterday in PT it was trial and error to try to isolate my movements and instability to see what was going on. It seems that when I have downward pressure (when my PT would push down on my collar bone) there is much less movement and it makes my shoulder feel more stable. To try to limit some of the movement my PT taped my shoulder with McConnell tape (similar to Kinesio) to try to put pressure on my clavicle and avoid excessive movement. I also have foam wedges which I tape to my shoulder to put even more pressure on my clavicle and take up the space that is created around my clavicle when I move my arm.

We'll see how this works these next few days. I'm going to PT twice a week now so that we can see quickly if I'm getting more stable, or able to gain more strength.

1 comment:

  1. I dislocated my shoulder when I was about 15 and every time I put certain types of pressure on it it would pop right out of joint again. Diving in the water or throwing a ball kind of hard or sometimes I wolud wake up in the night with my arms over my head and my shoulder would be out. All I could do was pull it down and pop it back in which was very painful. I went on living with it for several years poping it out about once a week or so until I bcame so awear of it that I was careful not to pop it out. After I made it about a year and a half without poping it out of place the ligaments/tendons tightened themselves up and it just quit poping out. Im still careful with it just out of habit but I haven't had it go out now for a long time. This is probably a whole different thing than what your looking at but the point is if you can keep from re injuring it for 1 to 2 years it will most likely heal itself. My arm is now just as strong as the other. Thought my story might at least be interesting, good luck

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