singpretty

Hi! My biggest struggle lately is my right ribs, particularly lower ribs. They feel painful, stiff, and generally out of whack. One seems sunken from the front and a bit "poky" out the back. I'm constantly squirming, shifting, and deep breathing to produce movement and audible clicks there.

My dream is for a doctor to be interested, say, yes, your ribs are weird, and loosen them up/"put them back" or show me how. It's there a particular sub-specialty who really cares about ribs, that I should seek out, that anyone's had luck with?

(I've had a general PT before, but he was way more interested in my weird-looking shoulder blade, even though that doesn't hurt 🤣.)

Thank you!!

It's an awkward subject but perhaps less so in a medical forum . . . Lately I find myself grappling anew with menstrual health. These periods come when they please, and some of them are truly fast and furious. Some even pause and then restart! The habits and intuition I've developed since age 11 (critically, how long a tampon will last) are suddenly useless. Today I hand-laundered spots out of my slacks . . . 4 times. I might as well have stayed home from work. I'm 40!! It's so demoralizing. 😕

I'm not sure if it's the thrombocythemia (calr+), the rather high-dose hydroxy, the low-dose aspirin, perimenopause, or some ungodly combination. But I'm thinking the aspirin regimen can't help? (Wh

I don't think I deal with ambiguity very well!

As of yesterday, EDS is actually in my chart; a geneticist "passed" me. And yet, I'm somehow still making myself crazy, revisiting the notes of past doctors who thought I was below the cutoff or unclear.

On the one hand, I tick some boxes clearly (kind of hard to fake a rectal prolapse in infancy 😶). On the other, I'm an "ehhhhh" on the flexibility portion (the geneticist I saw yesterday is the most lenient assessor I've ever had . . .).

I know symptom lists and diagnosis seeking are off-limits here, which makes total sense, I'm just desperate for some meta-discussion about how the criteria feel subjective and thus leave me feeling crazy. (