Ehlers Danlos Syndrome

Ehlers Danlos patient Nicole Hess once said that, “I feel like a marionette and someone else is in charge of the way I move.” This quote elicits the everyday struggles, pains, and feelings that people with Ehlers Danlos experience. A syndrome such as EDS leaves all that are affected to go through life struggling to complete simple day-to-day actions.

Paragraph 1: (The disease) Ehlers Danlos syndrome is a group of inherited disorders that can affect a person’s connective tissue - mostly the skin, joints, and blood vessel walls of the human body. There are thirteen different types of this syndrome; including classic, classic-like, cardiac-valvular, vascular, hypermobile, arthrochalasia, dermatosparaxis, kyphoscoliotic, brittle cornea, spondylo

A patient with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome may experience symptoms such as loose joints, muscle pain/fatigue, easy bruising, chronic pain, overly flexible joints, stretchy skin, and fragile blood vessels. The symptoms that a patient experiences may vary depending on the type of EDS that the patient is diagnosed with. For example, with Classic Ehlers Danlos Syndrome the patient may experience overly flexible joints (joints move past normal range of motion), stretchy skin (skin stretches farther than normal), and fragile skin (damaged skin does not heal well). Experiencing any of the symptoms listed previously can cause a multitude of pain in the patient, as well as, an altered lifestyle. The altered lifestyle really comes into play for a patient when the treatment of the symptoms begins. For instance, patients usually begin physical therapy, which is usually “used to rehabilitate those with joint and muscle instability” . Also, doctors may recommend “surgery to repair damaged joints”, in addition to possibly being prescribed “drugs to minimize [any] pain” that the patient may be experiencing. The part of treatment that will unquestionably alter the patient's lifestyle are the steps that need to be taken to prevent any possibility of injury in order to protect joints. Some doctors advice the use of assistive devices to diminish pressure on the patient’s joints. The last part of treatment that will change the patient’s life is that it is advised to avoid contact sports, lifting weights, harsh soaps that may cause the skin to have an allergic reaction or becoming too dry, and to use sunscreen to protect the