I broke my laptop :/

so..being the genius I am, I started a blog and then broke my laptop the next day.

I stood up to check whether the potato's were boiling yet, but tripped up and kicked the screen of my laptop which was sat on the floor. Although, Tom asked me to check on the potato's, so I guess I can blame him! Maybe not....

I would love to use this as a time to blame EDS and tell you all about how we have a lack of spacial awareness because our joints don't move how we expect them to, but if I'm honest it was a lack of brain awareness and I didn't realize there was a blanket wrapped around my foot. I still can't believe my laptop broke though. I broke the connection between wire and computer, yet with a unique way of turning it on, it continued to work. I accidentally poured a pint of water over it, yet after letting it relax in front of the fire for an hour, it continued to work. Finally, a little kick in the face was what broke it. Gutted.

Anyway, hopefully I'll make a post soon which isn't about my destruction of technology.

Thanks for reading!

An introduction to the world of Ehlers-Danlos....

This post is really long. They won't all be long, I just wanted to explain EDS well and I kind of rambled. Now, I could tell you all about intricate medical stuff that adds up to this condition, but the chances are if you don't have EDS, you've probably never had reason to look into the role collogen plays in your body so if I explain it, it wont mean anything to you. If you do have EDS, you already know it all anyway and probably just want something to relate to. So I'll give you a brief overview of my symptoms, and then I'll explain it in "normal person situations", as I'm going to call them.

• I get subluxations (partial dislocations - the joint comes out of the socket, but not the whole way) in every joint, multiple times per day.
•  I wear orthopedic insoles because otherwise the arches in my feet collapse.
• I have some mild prolapses. One of them being my bladder which means about 3947247 trips to the bathroom per day. 
• I'm gluten intolerant. 
• My skin is weirdly stretchy in places. It's pale to the point of translucent and bruises like a peach.
• I take tablets to regulate my adrenaline otherwise I get super hyperactive or anxious.
• I have permanent dry mouth so I drink a LOT of water. 
• I could use something every day for years and then one day I'll wake up and be allergic to it. I don't know why this happens.
• I run on very limited energy and if I run out of energy I get dizzy, frustrated, I can't string a sentence together and I have to eat food. 
• I think there's more, but that's all I can think of for now. 

So, how can you imagine this?

Imagine you're carrying a child on your shoulders. Now imagine an hour later, you're still carrying the child. Imagine the aches and the tiredness. But for some reason you can't remove the child, so you continue about your day with this feeling getting worse.

Then someone makes you join a three legged race. Before you know it your leg is twisting out at a weird angle and you can't make it stop. Now you have to also continue the rest of the day with your leg attached to this other person, twisting all over the place.

You have to reach to get something off a shelf and as you do your shoulder makes a "clunk" noise like....a clunking thing. It feels like when you stub your toe. Except it's in your shoulder and it doesn't fade..

You're in a meeting at work and still carrying a child, have a leg attatched to someone and a stubbed-toe-feeling shoulder and out of nowhere you realize you suddenly have that painful bladder feeling like when you've held a wee for a really long car journey and can't find a service station.

You excuse yourself from the meeting, but this is embarrassing and your strapped-to-another-person leg bashes into a table. You get heart palpitations, because the embarrassment spikes your adrenaline. I guess this can be compared to antelopes galloping on your chest.

Because of the stampeding antelopes, you can't concentrate on your work and you make a couple of mistakes. No one can see the child on your shoulders, the man strapped to your leg, the antelopes or the stubbed toe shoulder. They just see the mistake. So they come over and tell you to please concentrate more because silly mistakes just aren't acceptable.

By the time you get home, this is still all happening but your friends want you to meet for a drink.....do you think you'd feel up to it? How about knowing you were going to relive it every day for the rest of your life, but with various other odd things happening at any given time?

This is the best way I can explain EDS. We look normal, we act normal and underneath, this is going on. The reason I've made this blog is to try and give people an insight into an illness they've never heard of and also to help people who do have EDS to realize that they're not alone. And that sometimes, even though it hurts, it can be pretty funny. And finally, that we can still be happy and find weird ways to cope with it (ever driven home with a jar of coffee stuck between your shoulder blades to keep your ribs in place? That's quite amusing.). 

I promise not every entry will be this long. Thank you, if you actually read this far!