The last topic I wanted to cover on hypermobility before going back to rambling about other things that occupy my mind are fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Both of these often come with hypermobility (in fact, one of the first sites I ever visited about hypermobility was created by this girl who had all three). Since I'm lucky enough not to have either, or only have the fatigue part of CFS, I can't tell you much from personal experience. Here's two great resources, this one is for fibromyalgia, and this one for CFS.
All three syndromes have several overlapping symptoms, mainly involving joint pain. I've read other places that hypermobility and CFS together can also look like multiple sclerosis (MS), since chronic fatigue wears down your awareness and memory. Anyways, when in doubt there are plenty of tests for MS so it should be relatively easy to figure out.
I kind of want to use the end of this post for a feminist rant about how diseases that affect mainly women don't get enough attention, like this or breast cancer. That doesn't seem very fair though since there are men who get this too... I guess my real issue is the conversation between physicians and their patients. Doctors today seem pretty at diagnosing and not too bad at treating specific problems. Things that show up all over the body with a wide range of symptoms seem to throw people off. TV makes this look really cool and sexy with shows like House where the doc is on the clock to figure it out, but in reality there doesn't seem to be as much motivation, and the whole process goes more slowly. Hopefully with this project we'll find a way for general practitioners to communicate more easily with specialists, and for specialists to talk to each other, so that they share information instead of shuffling the patient around and letting them put the pieces together for themselves.
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