How many of you had a traumatic injury just before your DD started? I sure did! I fell and severely stretched the muscles where my first lumps started. in my upper back rib cage.
Hi hon - I was falling ALOT before the onset of DD, or before I recognized it anyway. I fell and literally shattered my right knee, they have put in pins once, and replaced it twice, and it still doesn’t work well. I read someplace in all my research, that people with DD just fall, no reason, no trips, but that sometimes their legs just give out.
Hugs
Calle//Carin Phx.AZ
ok I am running the risk of sounding like a broken record here, but I have fallen alot too. I will be walking along and just fall, my ankles are the most painful of my joint problems, when i go to stand up my lower legs are so stiff I have to hold on the something to steady myself. If I go too fast I will fall, and I do that alot. I think I can move like I used to but my body is always ready to correct me.
As a child I grew up on a ranch I rode horses and bikes and fell all the time. My knees and legs are all scared up from my accidents. I had now idea when I go older that I would pay again for all those times. I was a kid having a good time.
The same thing happened to me Calle…I kept falling alot…The woorst was at work I dont know what happened but it was like my leg didnt want to work and I fell…now its worse…my ankles dont like working and I have to watch my step.The only trauma I had was I went in for gall bladder surgery the laprascope(sp?) one and wound up having to have surgery as the bleeding wouldnt stop…Then menopause started…(heck that’s trauma enough…haha)Now I have lumps every where and even in the old c section site I have had for 30 years…
Too many injuries to pinpoint which one, but I tore my rotator cuff and had surgery just before it really took off.
I use to fall a lot too and it always seemed like I would always land the same way and scrape up my right knee. If I didn’t use my cane, I would still fall.
My experience had been that I’d be walking along downtown with my friends headed to lunch and if I turned my head to the left, suddenly with no warning I’d be down on the ground. I had this happen several times and went to a neurologist who called it “isolated incidences of disequilibrium.” Subsequent to that I learned that it really isn’t a diagnosis.
So, I don’t know if it was DD-related or not but they never could find a reason for it.
Years after that I still fall without warning without turning my head to the left. I’ve seen 5 different neurologists and none of them can explain why I fall. The doctors’ attitude is if you didn’t break anything when you fell, don’t worry about it.
I was injured in a fall in August 2005. I landed on the right side of my body after being knocked unconscious. My left thigh landed on the step against which my right knee was jammed and where my lower right leg and foot were trapped beneath my body. I did not know where I was nor why I could not move my right leg. I stretched my left leg and foot until I found something solid I could push against in order to gain enough leverage to lift my body enough to free my right one. My right hand and arm lay on the floor beside me, it must have slammed pretty hard on the floor because it was at first numb then began to sting and hurt as feeling returned to it. I was only able to get up by reaching my right arm across to the handrail on my left and inch my feet beneath me as I pulled myself upright. Understandably, I had many aches and pains for sometime but I became alarmed when my left waist became so swollen that my clothes did not fit. The doctor said I something called a lipoma. He said it was nothing to worry about, he said lipomas are just benign, fatty tumors and they do not hurt. He said the lipoma formed on pulled/torn muscles so I assumed the pain I felt was from the injuries rather than the lipoma itself.
The lumps began to spread, first they covered my upper torso then spread to my groin and on to my thighs and it very quickly became easier to list the places I do not have lipomas. I never imagined living in constant pain, never realized how badly something could hurt and not kill you and never thought anyone as healthy and physically fit as I was before the accident, would so quickly become physically disabled. I became extremely depressed as I was already suffering with stretched and torn muscles, a herniated L4 (lumbar) disk and seizures caused by Traumatic Brain Injury along with loss of cognitive abilities to the extent that I am now mentally disabled.
About the time I thought I was losing my mind, I came across support groups for people with lipomas. The kind, compassionate and knowlegeable members of those groups were the only ones who could extend a lifeline when I thought my world had ended. I was advised by many to have one of the lipomas biopsied, the diagnosis was an unencapsulated angiolipoma and as it happened, Dr. Herbst was beginning her Dercums research at that time so I had the lab forward the biopsied tissue to her and she confirmed that diagnosis.
I encourage any of you to take advantage of my research to do the same and I welcome any new information you can share.