“The symptoms of EDS aren’t limited to the musculoskeletal system and commonly affect everything from hearing and vision to integumentary issues such as prolonged wound healing and easy bruising. It also became apparent that the specialists I had seen had contributed valuable information to the overall puzzle but were simply not able to put it all together. I had accrued an impressive list of diagnoses commonly associated with EDS: migraine, gum disease, anxiety, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, restless leg syndrome, sleep disorder, lumbar spondylolisthesis, sacroiliac dysfunction, hiatal hernia, hearing loss, and early-onset osteoarthritis. EDS explained everything right down to the bumps on the sides of my heels called piezogenic papules and my velvety soft, delicate skin. One physician explained how she makes sense of this constellation of multi-system symptoms by using the phrase: ‘If you can’t connect the issues, think of connective tissues.’ Finally, it all made sense.”

Julie Griffis is a physical therapist. Linda Bluestein is an integrative medicine physician.

They share their stories and discuss this KevinMD article, “The difficult to diagnose comorbidity that plagues Ehlers-Danlos syndrome patients.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.