I have had knee pain since my late teens and for years suspected I had arthritis. I went to doctor after doctor asking them to check it out and all of them said I was young and therefore couldn’t have pain and wouldn’t run any kind of tests. I developed plantar fascitis around age 20 from over-extending my knees while working and was told to wear these inserts and it’ll disappear, and it’s been 17 years of living with constant heel pain. At 24, the hip pain began and I was given injections but it only got better for a little while. This year I developed pain at the top of my femur and as I’m finally old enough, the doctors agreed to have me checked out by a rheumatologist.
He checked me out for about ten minutes and determined I was hypermobile. After decades of pleading for a diagnosis and the medical community wrote me off because they couldn’t look past my age. Now that I have a diagnosis, they still just want to give me a few injections and walk away. It is so incredibly frustrating to be treated like my pain doesn’t matter and like I don’t know what is happening to my own body.
