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Yes! And I was taught that if it doesn't swell, or gets purple or anything - it can't be that bad.
So I learned that my interpretation of the pain was too excessive. I was 26 when I learned I have probably had chronic pain all my life. I recently learned some people take pain killers for epilating their leg hair while I didn't even consider that to be in the pain spectrum.
Some people take painkillers for epilating????
I gave MYSELF a bikini wax and gritted through it. I would now like to see how a non chronic pain homie would handle that.
Ope I just noticed I wrote bikini.
I meant Brazilian. I gave myself a Brazilian wax. No cream no painkillers nothing. Like it still hurt but not enough I couldn't do it.
i’m similar with the pain, i have an extremely high pain tolerance for some reason. topical numbing agent don’t work for me so when i had to remove a mole and the numbing went away after like 10 seconds, the doctor had to keep cutting the mole off as is because i had gotten the max amount of numbing injection you could get. i just sat through them cutting off some skin from my back. i was like 10 lmao, my mom was horrified
Are you a redhead or have freckles by any chance? People with a specific gene mutation need so, sooo much more freezing and meds that out you under for surgery.
The MC1R gene mutation in redheads and some people with freckles (redheads aren't all white, they are in all races) has a bunch of strange atypical features. From pain tolerance, temperature adaptability, medication issues and many others. It's a pretty cool subject. The down side is a pretty huge increase in some forms of cancer.
[need more anesthesia](https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/do-redheads-really-need-more-anesthesia)
[pain tolerance](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/study-finds-link-between-red-hair-pain-threshold)
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Interesting, I know a lot of meds work differently for ppl with EDS too.
I hope that the findings that it's not as rare as once thought will help get more research funding. I have so many questions.
I used to be a competitive athlete and I tore the ligaments in my ankle during a match. Despite being in agony, no one took it seriously because it wasn’t swelling. The x-ray didn’t show anything broken and it still wasn’t swelling so they thought I’d just sprained it. It took a year of agony and an mri to reveal that the ligaments in my ankle had completely torn and poorly healed themselves, trapping fluid. I’d need surgery if I want to get rid of the pain, which the doctors don’t recommend (fortunately pain is mostly confined to when I’m running and jumping). So… yes (,: unfortunately I do not swell
I've never really swelled up with any injuries, I was told so many times as a child/teen that I hadn't actually hurt myself because there was no swelling, when in fact I was spraining my ankles loads and actually damaged the muscles in my left wrist from an injury, which will never get back to 100% function
I tore my Achilles stepping off a curb wrong, and it never swelled or even bruised. I went to my Ortho urgent care only because I had felt the tendon “trickle” up the back of my leg when it happened and thought it might be serious. I pirate stiff- legged it into the clinic, and I’m pretty sure they thought I was fine until they started actually examining the ankle. MRI showed a complete tear.
Damn... I thought I was bad with random lame injuries...
I was STANDING in my driveway. Just standing.
My knee started to buckle forward, so I shifted weight to prevent falling - the knee suddenly reversed course and went FULL HYPEREXTENSION backwards with a weird popping feeling.
It took 2+ months, and 2 different MRIs, to find that I'd torn the lateral meniscus and had a partial ACL tear. They also found torn muscle fibers in my calf, and found fatty infiltration that indicated I'd apparently torn this muscle previously - when they asked why I sought help this time, versus the pain of previous tears, I replied "there was a pop this time. That was different from other times I've hurt my leg just by existing." 😂
Yeah, it’s when it does something different we think “uh oh, this might just be serious this time.” I honestly think I’ve torn it before. But when I think “Achilles tears,” I think big tough football players rolling on the field holding their leg, and unable to walk. Not middle aged women walking through a parking lot. Without the “trickle” I probably would have said, “Eh, another sprain and just wrapped it up.”
I don't really swell either! Occasionally I do if I did something particularly egregious but even then it's pretty negligible. I broke my ankle as a kid and my parents didn't believe me and made me put my shoes on anyway. I complained about it so much for days until my parents finally took me to the ER and found out it was broken and an extra bone had dislodged and was just floating around in my foot. The whole time my ankle didn't bruise or swell!!
I constantly "sprain" my ankle and it never swells at all really. It just bends down and my shoe goes sideways. I keep walking normally and go about my day.
Ah, but drinking water doesn’t always mean you’re hydrating! I drink water and it goes right thru. I could drink all the water I could handle and just spend the day in the bathroom. I need to have sugar or electrolytes in my beverage for my body to do anything with it. (I’m also less nauseous from it!) Even then, my body doesn’t absorb much orally so I have to do IV fluids twice a week. All thanks to dysautonomia, [which is highly comorbid with EDS](https://sedinfrance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Mathias2021-Dysautonomia-in-the-Ehlers-Danlos-syndromes-and-hypermobility-spectrum.pdf)!
I have started drinking coconut water often and it does help with the chapped lips and skin. I can't really afford any of the fancy oral electrolyte drinks.
In Canada I can't get crap in the way of symptom management. I guess I could just drop by an ER weekly with a migraine or something but that's a 7-10 hour commitment. Plus, the waiting room seats are hella uncomfortable and my immune system is shot.
Oh, I feel ya. I react to a lot of the electrolyte drinks, and the ones I don’t are so damn expensive! Add in my absorption issues, and I ended up with a port, getting twice-weekly fluids to maintain hydration.
Yep. Broken bones without swelling. No explanation for it. Now have CRPS and it only swells a teeny bit, but goes purple/red so visibly angry. The GP refused to refer me for months to pain management because of the lack of swelling, which meant I missed the window where they could have helped.
Broke my arm and dislocated my jaw in a bad fall. No swelling on either one and was told it’s not that bad. Made them call my mom and walked in with a full cast the next day. Still have jaw problems almost 15 years later. Every time I dislocate or sprain things it’s more like. I can feel the internal swelling? But there’s nothing externally. Don’t really get swelling from bug bites or anything external either. Just so very itchy.
That's what I was trying to explain but I don't have the words. I feel it's angry, tight and painful but I nor anyone else can see visible swelling.
If it's a normal dislocation I can usually pop it back with a few tricks. A new one or a bad one that gets mad, I need to rest, take advil and hope it calms down enough to settle in a couple days. Hot baths seem to help too.
My child, who is hyper mobile, hurt his arm when he was 9 years old. There was no bruise, no swelling, and it looked perfectly normal, and he was in a phase of trying to get out of going to school, so of course I blew off his “I need to go to the doctor instead of school” by offering him Tylenol and a firm “no”. Long story short, his wrist was fractured. He is 15 and still hasn’t let me live it down.
You’re not alone there!! My parents almost always REFUSED to take me until it had been a couple weeks because I never had swelling. It happened both time I broke my wrists, except with one I had broken one bone and dislocated the other. I was 13(-ish) when that happened. I’m 25 now and I have no intention of letting them live it down, it’s a running family joke now. Parents don’t know what they don’t know
This is so real!! I've broken alot of bones when I was younger cu, I was really adventurous!! One time I broke the growth plate on my ankle. And my teachers didn't believe me cuz there was like no swelling. I then had to walk about a mile home (I was in like 3rd grade btw) cuz my normal shorter route was under construction. I tried to tell my mom but she also said that it's fine. Untill about a day later where i was still in agony. She FINALLY took me to the Dr and they both were shocked when I had a pretty bad fracture in my growth plate! (Which is really bad and scarry! One wrong move and my ankle wouldn't of grown!) So what a surprise when I showed up to school the next day with a big ol cast lol.
Have another story of when a bully pushed me into a brick wall while I was running to class. (6th grade)I ended up fracturing my elbow and I had to write a 2 page essay before my teacher would let me leave. I ended up just walking out and calling my mom (I had a hidden phone) and she was pissed!!! Took me right to the e.r and got a cast put on me that I had on for like 8 months!! It had 0 swelling.
That's a very interesting point! My kids have EDS, they have not swollen up with injuries like most people do, it's actually led to delayed treatment more than once.
Dislocated my ankle and broke the little bone in my leg (femur?) while walking my dogs. Went home put my ankle brace on because I thought I'd only dislocated my ankle no swelling no bruising. A week later it started to swell so I went to the doctor and they took an x-ray from ankle to knee. Yep it was broke. Doctor told me not to walk on it until I got my cast I looked at her and said I've been walking around on this for a week now I walked in here and I'm going to have to walk out. No one believed me when I told them how I did either, I would get that look. I hate that.
"Your wrist isn't swollen enough to be broken"
*insert maury meme*
The x-ray determined that was a lie
I had cracked my radial. The Dr doubled down while we were all looking at the x-ray. It wasn't separated, but it was still obvious (it looked like someone drew a neat line across the bone). My dad took me to get me another opinion, and I got a pretty blue cast.
Bonus: I broke it because I tripped over air and fell (I swear my joints conspired).
Didn't have any noticeable swelling with a shoulder dislocation. Also slammed my thumb in a car door and it didn't swell. My thumb didn't even bruise until like a week later.
I broke my wrist at 12 and again at 13. Both times took my parents 2 weeks to bring me to the doctor because I had minimal swelling and could still use my fingers a little bit. The second break was a break of one bone, and a dislocation of the other. Same thing has happened with sprained ankles, with the multiple dislocations of one knee, and when I partially tore my ACL in the other knee.
Disclaimer: I haven’t been officially diagnosed with EDS, but I’m in the beginning stages of trying to get a diagnosis with my primary. I’ve always been an athlete (cheer, gymnastics, dance, soccer, softball, basketball for a couple years, and I did competitive snowboard racing in college), so it’s a little hard to parse out what injuries are just from sports and which injuries are from doing sports with EDS
Most baby zebras have been highly active in sports when younger. From what I've read, the excessive force and strain on our joints from our youthful fun cause us more pain and damage as we age.
Gout. I have bad gout (from kidney disease/genetic) and my attacks do not involve swollen, red joints. Just an unbearable amount of pain. It took a while to realize I had atypical gout with atypical presentation. Yes, gout hurts A LOT!
I've fallen down the stairs several times and gotten thick purple bruises that have covered my back and hips. But I got one lump ever, And it was believed the fluid from my knee had escaped
I sprained my ankle pretty bad a few years ago and it hardly swelled up and I had minimal bruising, but it's still not normal to this day and I have pain in my Achilles when I try to go on tiptoe
Yep and if there is any swelling it’s so slight only my mother can tell (I swear she has laser eyes or something) or the area is super hot to touch like to the point it feels like I left a heating pad on it for like an hour straight type hot
Yup I've only swelled up once and it was when a horse stepped on my ankle. Thanks to the mud I didn't break it but it was really swollen for a few weeks
Same here! I just never swell up at all, even for non joint-related injuries. When i got a bunch of ear piercings (both lobes and cartilage) recently, they gave me longer jewellery posts to accommodate swelling and told me to come back in a month or so to get them downsized. I had to go back 4 days later because they kept getting caught on everything! Piercer was absolutely baffled lol
(Minor edit for clarification since i wrote this at 3am and missed a couple words lol)
This jogged my memory. My tongue did swell up after I got it done but only for 2 days. She was a bit of a crappy piercer though. None of my other body mods swelled up at all. How odd ..
I relate to this so much! I've actually had to look up what exactly swelling around injuries is meant to look like before now, as it's just something I can't personally relate to
Yep! And every injury I’ve been told it’s not swollen so nothing can be wrong…. I broke my arm and it didn’t swell at all. It was broken for 3 weeks before anyone believed me that something was wrong.
I never ever swell to the extent that others can see. If i do its always something random and weird like a single toe for no apparent reason. My hands swell a little every morning but no one would be able to tell but me. Injuries are never visible except for the extreme chronic bruising.
Ugh, I bruise like a peach. I swear if I look at my skin wrong it'll turn purple. It's so annoying. Massaging them helps break down the trapped blood. Still, I always look like I've been in a rock tumbler.
Doctors verdict? "Be more careful"...
Yes. My joints never swell when they sublux or pop out and it made it really difficult to explain to others that yes I did hurt myself and yes I’m in excruciating pain lol.
I've broken 7 toes and sprang my ankle really bad by falling down the stairs and essentially riding my foot down the whole flight and nothing ever swelled or bruised. Same with my nose, broke it twice and it never bruised
Little swelling, even with high inflammation markers. I had a bad flare in May, my c-reactive protein was 3x the max of the normal range. So much pain, no inflammation.
This! All my life I've rolled my ankles. My entire childhood. And once, I KNEW this was different. Doctor told me it was nothing cause it wasn't blue or swollen. Nothing. It was a perfectly healthy looking foot. One MRT (that I forced him to do) later I have a torn ligament,capsular tear and a bone bruise. It's safe to say, that up to this day he doesn't understand how this could happen😂
I hopped off a fence as a teen and rolled my ankle. Or so I thought. After that I couldn't put any weight on it at all but there was no swelling.
It took me 3 days of hoping and crawling around in absolute agony before a friend's mom forced me to the get it checked. At that point I had a small goose egg bump on top of my foot just below where the side ankle bump bone is that was a slight purple color around it.
Doc didn't believe it was broken at first till I almost passed out when he tried to flex my foot. Turns out I broke the bone that is in the direct center of all the ankle bones. Apparently it's one of the most painful breaks...
I was in a cast for 3 months
Whoa. Well, that would explain a LOT about me as well. I never swell either. Broke my foot pretty badly a few years ago and it never swelled and barely looked bruised. My kids are the same way. We've been blown off by so many doctors for so many things at this point, it's getting ridiculous. Including a lack of swelling...
When I was little I was told off for lying so often just because I didn’t swell! Later got lots of x rays following a car crash and had so many poorly healed/healing breaks and fractures they had to make sure I wasn’t an abuse case 🙃
It was my saving grace that my parents believed me and took me to urgent cares and hospitals for every. single. one!
At least they (doctors) listen now!
that’s been my experience! i also get this silly thing where my knees get really hot, like to the tough, but they aren’t super red or swollen at all, and no pain felt, just rly hot! and i’ve only just realized that’s probably inflammation without the fluid retention lol
Yes! And when I did experience swelling in my legs recently, they didn’t understand why I was so freaked out. I never swell, even when I flew down a flight of stairs, sprained my ankles, or was in a major car accident. They still can’t tell me what caused the swelling, and it finally went away overnight. But they refuse to take the swelling seriously… because they don’t believe I don’t swell.
Honestly you’re helping me so much, because I have a doctors appointment in the morning about swelling, and this thread might convince them that I’m not imagining that I don’t usually experience swelling.
I don't get no swelling but I do get delayed swelling and bruising after injuries. My physio treats a lot of eds patients and actually has eds himself and said he sees delayed swelling/bruising/pain after injuries commonly in people with eds
My ankles no longer swell from simple injuries, like sprains. I have noticed when i injure other parts of my body they don’t swell much either. The only swelling ive noticed now is from surgeries and it goes away in a few days.
Yeah, major surgeries I do swell up but never as much as the doctor expects. Which they claim means I'm healing extraordinarily fast. It also goes away really fast.
I realized that I also got some swelling when I pierced my tongue but none of my other body mods had that issue.
Well, this is interesting. If there is anyone on this sub that does actually EDS research this might be something to look into.
I have looked all over the internet and haven't found anything on lack of swelling due to injury or disease.
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Yes! And I was taught that if it doesn't swell, or gets purple or anything - it can't be that bad. So I learned that my interpretation of the pain was too excessive. I was 26 when I learned I have probably had chronic pain all my life. I recently learned some people take pain killers for epilating their leg hair while I didn't even consider that to be in the pain spectrum.
Some people take painkillers for epilating???? I gave MYSELF a bikini wax and gritted through it. I would now like to see how a non chronic pain homie would handle that.
Oh my gosh! Is this possibly why I can diy a bikini wax without too much trouble?
Ope I just noticed I wrote bikini. I meant Brazilian. I gave myself a Brazilian wax. No cream no painkillers nothing. Like it still hurt but not enough I couldn't do it.
i’m similar with the pain, i have an extremely high pain tolerance for some reason. topical numbing agent don’t work for me so when i had to remove a mole and the numbing went away after like 10 seconds, the doctor had to keep cutting the mole off as is because i had gotten the max amount of numbing injection you could get. i just sat through them cutting off some skin from my back. i was like 10 lmao, my mom was horrified
Are you a redhead or have freckles by any chance? People with a specific gene mutation need so, sooo much more freezing and meds that out you under for surgery.
i’m brown haired middle eastern, but i do have some type of freckles on my hand?? what is the mutation? that’s actually pretty interesting
The MC1R gene mutation in redheads and some people with freckles (redheads aren't all white, they are in all races) has a bunch of strange atypical features. From pain tolerance, temperature adaptability, medication issues and many others. It's a pretty cool subject. The down side is a pretty huge increase in some forms of cancer. [need more anesthesia](https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/do-redheads-really-need-more-anesthesia) [pain tolerance](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/study-finds-link-between-red-hair-pain-threshold)
that’s super interesting. i wonder if you can have this gene mutation while not being a redhead
Yup, if you are sensitive to the sun and get freckles you could have the gene mutation as well.
It's really common with EDS as well. I don't know whether it's the same or a different mutation, but the same effects
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It's also very common in EDS actually
Interesting, I know a lot of meds work differently for ppl with EDS too. I hope that the findings that it's not as rare as once thought will help get more research funding. I have so many questions.
I used to be a competitive athlete and I tore the ligaments in my ankle during a match. Despite being in agony, no one took it seriously because it wasn’t swelling. The x-ray didn’t show anything broken and it still wasn’t swelling so they thought I’d just sprained it. It took a year of agony and an mri to reveal that the ligaments in my ankle had completely torn and poorly healed themselves, trapping fluid. I’d need surgery if I want to get rid of the pain, which the doctors don’t recommend (fortunately pain is mostly confined to when I’m running and jumping). So… yes (,: unfortunately I do not swell
I've never really swelled up with any injuries, I was told so many times as a child/teen that I hadn't actually hurt myself because there was no swelling, when in fact I was spraining my ankles loads and actually damaged the muscles in my left wrist from an injury, which will never get back to 100% function
I tore my Achilles stepping off a curb wrong, and it never swelled or even bruised. I went to my Ortho urgent care only because I had felt the tendon “trickle” up the back of my leg when it happened and thought it might be serious. I pirate stiff- legged it into the clinic, and I’m pretty sure they thought I was fine until they started actually examining the ankle. MRI showed a complete tear.
That is one of the knarliest EDS stories I’ve heard - it physically made me cringe. I hope your ankle is better now!
Damn... I thought I was bad with random lame injuries... I was STANDING in my driveway. Just standing. My knee started to buckle forward, so I shifted weight to prevent falling - the knee suddenly reversed course and went FULL HYPEREXTENSION backwards with a weird popping feeling. It took 2+ months, and 2 different MRIs, to find that I'd torn the lateral meniscus and had a partial ACL tear. They also found torn muscle fibers in my calf, and found fatty infiltration that indicated I'd apparently torn this muscle previously - when they asked why I sought help this time, versus the pain of previous tears, I replied "there was a pop this time. That was different from other times I've hurt my leg just by existing." 😂
Yeah, it’s when it does something different we think “uh oh, this might just be serious this time.” I honestly think I’ve torn it before. But when I think “Achilles tears,” I think big tough football players rolling on the field holding their leg, and unable to walk. Not middle aged women walking through a parking lot. Without the “trickle” I probably would have said, “Eh, another sprain and just wrapped it up.”
My ankles swell more when I sit too long than they ever have from any roll, sprain, or other ouch.
I don't really swell either! Occasionally I do if I did something particularly egregious but even then it's pretty negligible. I broke my ankle as a kid and my parents didn't believe me and made me put my shoes on anyway. I complained about it so much for days until my parents finally took me to the ER and found out it was broken and an extra bone had dislodged and was just floating around in my foot. The whole time my ankle didn't bruise or swell!!
I constantly "sprain" my ankle and it never swells at all really. It just bends down and my shoe goes sideways. I keep walking normally and go about my day.
Samesies…no telling how many times I’ve done that.
I always figured I was just to damn dehydrated for there to be enough fluid *to* swell, lol.
I thought that too in my 20s but a couple decades later and my addiction to my emotional support water bottle has proved that wrong.
Ah, but drinking water doesn’t always mean you’re hydrating! I drink water and it goes right thru. I could drink all the water I could handle and just spend the day in the bathroom. I need to have sugar or electrolytes in my beverage for my body to do anything with it. (I’m also less nauseous from it!) Even then, my body doesn’t absorb much orally so I have to do IV fluids twice a week. All thanks to dysautonomia, [which is highly comorbid with EDS](https://sedinfrance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Mathias2021-Dysautonomia-in-the-Ehlers-Danlos-syndromes-and-hypermobility-spectrum.pdf)!
I have started drinking coconut water often and it does help with the chapped lips and skin. I can't really afford any of the fancy oral electrolyte drinks. In Canada I can't get crap in the way of symptom management. I guess I could just drop by an ER weekly with a migraine or something but that's a 7-10 hour commitment. Plus, the waiting room seats are hella uncomfortable and my immune system is shot.
Oh, I feel ya. I react to a lot of the electrolyte drinks, and the ones I don’t are so damn expensive! Add in my absorption issues, and I ended up with a port, getting twice-weekly fluids to maintain hydration.
Yep. Broken bones without swelling. No explanation for it. Now have CRPS and it only swells a teeny bit, but goes purple/red so visibly angry. The GP refused to refer me for months to pain management because of the lack of swelling, which meant I missed the window where they could have helped.
That sucks so much. The gatekeeping in healthcare is brutal.
Broke my arm and dislocated my jaw in a bad fall. No swelling on either one and was told it’s not that bad. Made them call my mom and walked in with a full cast the next day. Still have jaw problems almost 15 years later. Every time I dislocate or sprain things it’s more like. I can feel the internal swelling? But there’s nothing externally. Don’t really get swelling from bug bites or anything external either. Just so very itchy.
That's what I was trying to explain but I don't have the words. I feel it's angry, tight and painful but I nor anyone else can see visible swelling. If it's a normal dislocation I can usually pop it back with a few tricks. A new one or a bad one that gets mad, I need to rest, take advil and hope it calms down enough to settle in a couple days. Hot baths seem to help too.
My child, who is hyper mobile, hurt his arm when he was 9 years old. There was no bruise, no swelling, and it looked perfectly normal, and he was in a phase of trying to get out of going to school, so of course I blew off his “I need to go to the doctor instead of school” by offering him Tylenol and a firm “no”. Long story short, his wrist was fractured. He is 15 and still hasn’t let me live it down.
You’re not alone there!! My parents almost always REFUSED to take me until it had been a couple weeks because I never had swelling. It happened both time I broke my wrists, except with one I had broken one bone and dislocated the other. I was 13(-ish) when that happened. I’m 25 now and I have no intention of letting them live it down, it’s a running family joke now. Parents don’t know what they don’t know
Oh my goodness!! I felt HORRIBLE. We laugh about it now!
This is so real!! I've broken alot of bones when I was younger cu, I was really adventurous!! One time I broke the growth plate on my ankle. And my teachers didn't believe me cuz there was like no swelling. I then had to walk about a mile home (I was in like 3rd grade btw) cuz my normal shorter route was under construction. I tried to tell my mom but she also said that it's fine. Untill about a day later where i was still in agony. She FINALLY took me to the Dr and they both were shocked when I had a pretty bad fracture in my growth plate! (Which is really bad and scarry! One wrong move and my ankle wouldn't of grown!) So what a surprise when I showed up to school the next day with a big ol cast lol. Have another story of when a bully pushed me into a brick wall while I was running to class. (6th grade)I ended up fracturing my elbow and I had to write a 2 page essay before my teacher would let me leave. I ended up just walking out and calling my mom (I had a hidden phone) and she was pissed!!! Took me right to the e.r and got a cast put on me that I had on for like 8 months!! It had 0 swelling.
That's a very interesting point! My kids have EDS, they have not swollen up with injuries like most people do, it's actually led to delayed treatment more than once.
Dislocated my ankle and broke the little bone in my leg (femur?) while walking my dogs. Went home put my ankle brace on because I thought I'd only dislocated my ankle no swelling no bruising. A week later it started to swell so I went to the doctor and they took an x-ray from ankle to knee. Yep it was broke. Doctor told me not to walk on it until I got my cast I looked at her and said I've been walking around on this for a week now I walked in here and I'm going to have to walk out. No one believed me when I told them how I did either, I would get that look. I hate that.
"Your wrist isn't swollen enough to be broken" *insert maury meme* The x-ray determined that was a lie I had cracked my radial. The Dr doubled down while we were all looking at the x-ray. It wasn't separated, but it was still obvious (it looked like someone drew a neat line across the bone). My dad took me to get me another opinion, and I got a pretty blue cast. Bonus: I broke it because I tripped over air and fell (I swear my joints conspired).
Didn't have any noticeable swelling with a shoulder dislocation. Also slammed my thumb in a car door and it didn't swell. My thumb didn't even bruise until like a week later.
I broke my wrist at 12 and again at 13. Both times took my parents 2 weeks to bring me to the doctor because I had minimal swelling and could still use my fingers a little bit. The second break was a break of one bone, and a dislocation of the other. Same thing has happened with sprained ankles, with the multiple dislocations of one knee, and when I partially tore my ACL in the other knee. Disclaimer: I haven’t been officially diagnosed with EDS, but I’m in the beginning stages of trying to get a diagnosis with my primary. I’ve always been an athlete (cheer, gymnastics, dance, soccer, softball, basketball for a couple years, and I did competitive snowboard racing in college), so it’s a little hard to parse out what injuries are just from sports and which injuries are from doing sports with EDS
Most baby zebras have been highly active in sports when younger. From what I've read, the excessive force and strain on our joints from our youthful fun cause us more pain and damage as we age.
This makes so much sense! Being an athlete was fun until everything decided to hurt, all the time
Gout. I have bad gout (from kidney disease/genetic) and my attacks do not involve swollen, red joints. Just an unbearable amount of pain. It took a while to realize I had atypical gout with atypical presentation. Yes, gout hurts A LOT!
I've fallen down the stairs several times and gotten thick purple bruises that have covered my back and hips. But I got one lump ever, And it was believed the fluid from my knee had escaped
I sprained my ankle pretty bad a few years ago and it hardly swelled up and I had minimal bruising, but it's still not normal to this day and I have pain in my Achilles when I try to go on tiptoe
Yep and if there is any swelling it’s so slight only my mother can tell (I swear she has laser eyes or something) or the area is super hot to touch like to the point it feels like I left a heating pad on it for like an hour straight type hot
yes same!! i wonder why i’ll have to look into that tomorrow
If you could update me if you find anything. I've been scouring the net for a couple years thinking I was just crazy.
honestly i have no clue! i havent rly looked into it too much since a month ago but i will let u know if i evet come across an answer!!
Yup I've only swelled up once and it was when a horse stepped on my ankle. Thanks to the mud I didn't break it but it was really swollen for a few weeks
Same here! I just never swell up at all, even for non joint-related injuries. When i got a bunch of ear piercings (both lobes and cartilage) recently, they gave me longer jewellery posts to accommodate swelling and told me to come back in a month or so to get them downsized. I had to go back 4 days later because they kept getting caught on everything! Piercer was absolutely baffled lol (Minor edit for clarification since i wrote this at 3am and missed a couple words lol)
This jogged my memory. My tongue did swell up after I got it done but only for 2 days. She was a bit of a crappy piercer though. None of my other body mods swelled up at all. How odd ..
I relate to this so much! I've actually had to look up what exactly swelling around injuries is meant to look like before now, as it's just something I can't personally relate to
Never noticed this until you mentioned but I don’t really swell either!
Yep! And every injury I’ve been told it’s not swollen so nothing can be wrong…. I broke my arm and it didn’t swell at all. It was broken for 3 weeks before anyone believed me that something was wrong.
Same! I’ve sprained ankles multiple times and the swelling is very mild every time, don’t know what it is
I never ever swell to the extent that others can see. If i do its always something random and weird like a single toe for no apparent reason. My hands swell a little every morning but no one would be able to tell but me. Injuries are never visible except for the extreme chronic bruising.
Ugh, I bruise like a peach. I swear if I look at my skin wrong it'll turn purple. It's so annoying. Massaging them helps break down the trapped blood. Still, I always look like I've been in a rock tumbler. Doctors verdict? "Be more careful"...
same!!!, just sprained my ankle and its barely swollen but man does it hurt like a motherfucker and crack weird
and i just remembered i had barely any swelling with my thumb fracture. i get more swelling from allergies than i do injuries.
Yes! I broke my wrist twice as a kid and no one believed me because I had no swelling or bruising, just mild pain!
Yes. My joints never swell when they sublux or pop out and it made it really difficult to explain to others that yes I did hurt myself and yes I’m in excruciating pain lol.
I've broken 7 toes and sprang my ankle really bad by falling down the stairs and essentially riding my foot down the whole flight and nothing ever swelled or bruised. Same with my nose, broke it twice and it never bruised
Someone else asked basically the same question a year ago https://www.reddit.com/r/ehlersdanlos/s/JY6zGt0nA9
Little swelling, even with high inflammation markers. I had a bad flare in May, my c-reactive protein was 3x the max of the normal range. So much pain, no inflammation.
This! All my life I've rolled my ankles. My entire childhood. And once, I KNEW this was different. Doctor told me it was nothing cause it wasn't blue or swollen. Nothing. It was a perfectly healthy looking foot. One MRT (that I forced him to do) later I have a torn ligament,capsular tear and a bone bruise. It's safe to say, that up to this day he doesn't understand how this could happen😂
I hopped off a fence as a teen and rolled my ankle. Or so I thought. After that I couldn't put any weight on it at all but there was no swelling. It took me 3 days of hoping and crawling around in absolute agony before a friend's mom forced me to the get it checked. At that point I had a small goose egg bump on top of my foot just below where the side ankle bump bone is that was a slight purple color around it. Doc didn't believe it was broken at first till I almost passed out when he tried to flex my foot. Turns out I broke the bone that is in the direct center of all the ankle bones. Apparently it's one of the most painful breaks... I was in a cast for 3 months
Whoa. Well, that would explain a LOT about me as well. I never swell either. Broke my foot pretty badly a few years ago and it never swelled and barely looked bruised. My kids are the same way. We've been blown off by so many doctors for so many things at this point, it's getting ridiculous. Including a lack of swelling...
When I was little I was told off for lying so often just because I didn’t swell! Later got lots of x rays following a car crash and had so many poorly healed/healing breaks and fractures they had to make sure I wasn’t an abuse case 🙃 It was my saving grace that my parents believed me and took me to urgent cares and hospitals for every. single. one! At least they (doctors) listen now!
that’s been my experience! i also get this silly thing where my knees get really hot, like to the tough, but they aren’t super red or swollen at all, and no pain felt, just rly hot! and i’ve only just realized that’s probably inflammation without the fluid retention lol
Yes! Ive had several grade two sprains with zero swelling. It just seems to be a weird quirk I have
Well, seems we aren't alone with that quirk. For better or worse I guess.
Yes! And when I did experience swelling in my legs recently, they didn’t understand why I was so freaked out. I never swell, even when I flew down a flight of stairs, sprained my ankles, or was in a major car accident. They still can’t tell me what caused the swelling, and it finally went away overnight. But they refuse to take the swelling seriously… because they don’t believe I don’t swell.
Honestly you’re helping me so much, because I have a doctors appointment in the morning about swelling, and this thread might convince them that I’m not imagining that I don’t usually experience swelling.
I don't get no swelling but I do get delayed swelling and bruising after injuries. My physio treats a lot of eds patients and actually has eds himself and said he sees delayed swelling/bruising/pain after injuries commonly in people with eds
Yup. I don't swell much at all. Ever. It's really nasty with things like mild burns because the skin looks 100% fine but it still hurts like hell.
My ankles no longer swell from simple injuries, like sprains. I have noticed when i injure other parts of my body they don’t swell much either. The only swelling ive noticed now is from surgeries and it goes away in a few days.
Yeah, major surgeries I do swell up but never as much as the doctor expects. Which they claim means I'm healing extraordinarily fast. It also goes away really fast. I realized that I also got some swelling when I pierced my tongue but none of my other body mods had that issue.
yes, i don’t tend to swell when i’m injured, except for when my cuticles get infected (i have dermatillomania)
Well, this is interesting. If there is anyone on this sub that does actually EDS research this might be something to look into. I have looked all over the internet and haven't found anything on lack of swelling due to injury or disease.
Nope! Drives me nuts.
All major dislocations have not come with swelling.