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tn's avatar

Speaking as someone with autism and EDS who's wound up needing way too many joint surgeries, if you've hit your OOP max for the year, there are two things you should do:

1. See an EDS specialist and go over all of your joints with them, including a detailed discussion about what sorts of exercise and activities you like to do (lifting, etc.). They can give you a formal diagnosis if you don't have one already, and can help with the second thing, which is....

2. Physical therapy. There's proactive physical therapy you can do for EDS to strengthen the stabilizing muscles around the joints that can help mitigate-- not prevent, but mitigate at least-- the stretching of the ligaments and tendons. It can make a huge difference and lessen the likelihood of things like this (potential distress or tear/rupture to the ligaments or tendons) happening in the future.

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Blessing Ajaero's avatar

This is not a punishment for all your writing. Your work has done so much for so many people, me included. It’s just a combination of overuse, possible T side effects, and autism-related hypermobility. Life happens. It just fucking happens.

The grief for your former abilities is the fucking worst. Feel your grief. Don’t shove it down. Let yourself be sad and furious and annoyed and allll that shit. There’s not much I can say except keep up the adaptations and see if you can find a 3D printer at the nearest library to print some open-source occupational therapy aids to make your ADLs easier/less painful. For writing, keep up the speech-to-text and use the inbuilt spell/grammar check as often as possible.

As for the insurance side of things, once you hit that OOP, work with the docs to prescribe over-the-counter stuff wrist braces, topical pain relief, etc. so it’s on the insurance company’s dime instead of coming directly out of your wallet. Check the website of your payor to find the medical necessity guidelines they use (if they use Interqual instead, hit me up) and your doc can write your clinical notes aligned with said guidelines, making denials much less likely.

All in all, I just wish you more low-pain days than high-pain ones. Surgery is likely the best option once there’s more imaging, but whatever happens, I hope you get some pain relief and recovery. 🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽

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