Lately I have even had a ton of pain from my low back, though only sitting or standing, gets better lying down. Tingly in my legs, too. But MRI shows no pinched nerves or disc herniation, just “some abnormalities” that the doctor doesn’t think are likely causing my problems, but they’re going to talk to me about it in person anyway…I am nervous. I really hope they figure out what it is and what can be done about it; back pain is notoriously difficult to resolve short of surgery or long-term use of painkillers, and just two and a half weeks of a moderate dose of naproxen wrecked my gastrointestinal system (though I’m sure that a previous course of high dose ibuprofen in the fall didn’t help matters and laid the major groundwork for that damage)!

All I can say is that I used to think hypermobility was a good thing with no negative payoffs, but now I am older I am not so sure that it does not lead to decreased mobility and problems as one gets older.

Yeah. That’s exactly what confuses me. “That shouldn’t happen” isn’t useful when something is happening. I actually have heard the same sort of thing from tech support people at times.

My dad always said I’d make a good technician (he was an electronics technician/engineer before he retired), and I suspect that’s part of it: If something is happening, it’s happening.

Not that it’s just medical things that this happens with– some days we feel like we’re just this big walking compendium of things that are found “too unexpected” or “too weird” for a lot of people, and all our interactions have to consist of us deciding which bits need to be mentioned, which bits theoretically could be mentioned, and which bits shouldn’t be mentioned at all, with any given person. (And just hope they don’t ever happen to pick up on any of the “shouldn’t mention it at all” things.)

I also juggle something very similar. And of course deal with the fallout when I don’t mention something someone assumes I should’ve mentioned. (Not sure it occurs to most people that I want to just live my daily life without explaining the backstory to everyone and their dog, and that if they imagine different backstory that’s not really my problem.)

Yeah, this is starting to sound familiar– we have a lot of things we don’t mention to doctors because they just aren’t relevant, and past experience suggests that bringing them up will result in the doctors trying to make it relevant even when it isn’t– overquestioning, etc, sometimes in ways that go beyond the unnecessary into the overly personal. (“That happens to you? Really? What does it feel like? What do you do about it when that happens?”)

And when people start in with the crap about “that shouldn’t be happening,” that tends to just make us afraid to ever mention it to anyone at all in the future. It’s like… I dunno, like you just turned into a divide by 0 error in the universe, or some H.P. Lovecraft monster or something, and instead of trying to help you with something if it’s wrong, they just stare and comment on how it shouldn’t be. When we talked about having lower back and hip pain, a few years ago (we don’t have this as badly any more, but it was constant a few years back), people would say things like “A person your age shouldn’t have that.” Well– shouldn’t or not, we were there, and we did have it, so why not acknowledge that instead of cross-checking it against some big list of preconceived “shoulds” like it’s somehow morally wrong for it to be happening.

Not that it’s just medical things that this happens with– some days we feel like we’re just this big walking compendium of things that are found “too unexpected” or “too weird” for a lot of people, and all our interactions have to consist of us deciding which bits need to be mentioned, which bits theoretically could be mentioned, and which bits shouldn’t be mentioned at all, with any given person. (And just hope they don’t ever happen to pick up on any of the “shouldn’t mention it at all” things.)

I was not considered flexible in school because their lone test of flexibility depends on arm length as much as anything

Yeah, we always got chewed out by the phys ed teachers at school for being “not flexible enough” because we couldn’t do toe-touches or most of their stretching exercises. But then on the flipside, out of class, we’d get other students telling us how it was “so gross” how far we could bend our thumbs and knees backwards. (Our knees tend to bend backwards and lock when we’re standing. A lot of the time, unless we’re supported by something, we can’t actually stand up for more than a few minutes without our legs giving way and/or getting dizzy and lightheaded from something to do with blood flow from the locked knees, I guess.)

I was not considered flexible in school because their lone test of flexibility depends on arm length as much as anything. My arms are proportionally short (my armspan is 4 or 5 inches shorter than my height) so that wasn’t a good measure of flexibility.

Wanna lend me a trace of joint flexibility for my right foot? ;-)

Or, oh, darn, doesn’t it work like that? ;-)