Chronic Pain Support Group

Hello fellow CPers. Just found this forum yesterday while doing some research. That research led me to writing the following this morning which sums up where I'm at and what I deal with:



Got A Name For It?

After tons of research, I have finally discovered where my lifelong joint pain is coming from. Well, at least I found a name for it:
Chronic Tendonosis.
Not tendonitis. Tendonitis suggests inflamation in the tendons. Tendonosis suggests deterioration or degeneration of the tendons.
And, I've been dealing with this for 25 years or so. It goes back to when I was 15. I grew a foot in a year. My tendons globally did not keep up. One other thing I remembered once I discovered tendonosis is that I was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatters back then. That's caused by growing too fast and having the tendon that holds your kneecaps on get inflamed and become a painful bump where it connects to the tibia.

And, it never healed. None of it.

I gotta tell ya, it's such a relief to me to finally be able to name the joint pain. For awhile there, I thought I was going crazy. Nope.
It was astounding. I was looking at a diagram of the human body and where all the major tendons are. As I went down the body, I was like, check, check, got it, check, yep, that one too, check. Shoulders, elbows, hands, fingers, most of my spine, occasionally my hips, especially the knees, and feet. As I looked at the diagram of the feet, I saw that we have two huge tendons that come down from the sides of the ankle and around the sides of the feet. These help hold the arch of the foot up. And, when I wake up in the morning and put pressure on my feet, the eye-crossing pain is coming directly from them.

It's like I can actually see, or visualize rather, the source of all of this now. It's a huge weight lifted off my mind.

Now, knowing this, changes nothing. If it hasn't gotten better (and only gotten worse as I've aged - 40 now) I doubt it's ever going to improve. It does change the way I think about it though. I've been thinking I have arthritis all this time. Which reminds me; it's no wonder all that glucosamine I've been taking hasn't helped one bit. It's not been the cartilage afterall. Duh. I guess, in my mind, thinking that if I do too much with my joints, bend too much, over stress them too much, that I would do more damage. Now that I know it's my tendons, I think I may function a little differently. I suppose the chance of me tearing a tendon is good, but still, I might not have to baby my body so much now. I'm sure that hasn't helped me much.

Now I need to find a way to strengthen the muscles around my offending joints. Help support the tendons a bit more. This is a catch-22 though. I cannot run. I can't do any high impact excersise at all. It just hurts too f*cking much. I can swim. I need to look into yoga. If I remember correctly, my friend is going to point me in the right direction with that.

I just have to be careful. Having degenerative disc disease in my back ups the stakes. When my back takes a shit, it's all over. (Which it's wont to do every six months or so...)

Now, all I need to do is figure out why I have begun having constantly pinched nerves in my uppper back and neck and I'll be all groovy. More or less. Heh.

Chronic Tendonosis. Who'da thunk it? Better question is; why didn't my doctor?


And that's that. To top all that painwise, I also live with Hydradenitis Suppurativa. Something most folks have never heard of. It's one painful bitch of a thing.
So yeah, I'm a mess. But, thanks to modern medicine, I function a bit more like a normal human being and try to stay positive. Which is quite a feat for someone who is pessimistic by nature.

I've been doing a lot of reading of posts here since I found it and have found all kinds of good info and folks who seem cool. So, I thought, why not. Join. So, howdy.
Posted on 11/19/08, 03:11 pm