Ehlers Danlos

Around a year ago I began having issues with my elbow. I would go to straighten it and there would be immense pain, a pop, and then it would straighten. I was told it was due to the Ehlers-Danlos and was placed in physical and occupational therapy. For the past year I've been in and out of PT and OT, used hot and cold treatments, compression therapy, and drug therapy. My elbow, and both wrists have not been able to be rehabilitated. I DID rehabilitate my legs after losing my ability to walk last October. I've been trying to get an appt with Ortho to discuss surgery but they kept denying my referral. My doctor finally had me come back in to discuss other options, and took one look at my elbow and freaked out. He said it's pretty much completely destroyed. He thinks the joint is completely gone, the muscle, tendons, and ligaments are torn, and he's not sure they WILL be able to fix it. I have an MRI on Thursday to see the extent of the damage but he assured me if it can be fixed it will have to happen surgically. My wrists are not as bad and may require pins/wires, or a fusion.

This is a picture of my left wrist, the worse of the two. A STUPID friggin doctor decided he would treat me as an RA patient because he didn't want me to be affected insurance wise as an EDS patient (even though my insurance is tricare and therefore not an issue). I trusted him to not do anything that would be BAD for my EDS but he did it anyway. I was given a cortizone shot in my wrist that completely destroyed it, and was only told afterwards the EDS patients should not use steroid treatments as it erodes our joints quicker. This is the damage left. This is my wrist in normal relaxed mode, I can no longer bend it the other way at all.

And this is the range of motion I have in it.

This is my right wrist, its not as bad, but it has lost some range of motion. However, the bone protrudes quite a bit, as you can see (it's not super clear in this picture).

And this is my elbow. I have both arms raised so you can see how bent it is. It's permanently in this position. This is my dominant arm and I have now had to learn to use my left hand to feed myself and so forth as my arm no longer bends to reach my face. (you can also see how bent my wrist is) Ignore my face, Chris got me mid blink.

I tried to get a picture so you could see how swollen it is. You can see my bone, and then next to it is a huge mass of swollen tissue.

And this is me trying to supine my arms. My good elbow is supined, but my bad one no longer can. The joint is so bad I can't turn my arm over palm side up any longer, I can only swing it out and in, using my shoulder.