Impaired skin etc. healing/bruising in HMS?

[Fiona-Jane]

lol! that made me laugh!

and im a bit chubby at the moment (xmas fat! ) so im not as veiny as i usually am, but by the end of the month i'll be back to being veiny enough to scare small children! mwhahaha!


thanks for the giggle, i think id best try and get some sleep as i gotta get up at 8am for church.....
fi xx

[antimatter]

Hello people, please forgive any non-standard language usage, I am yet another foreigner (Canadian).

I think that it is possible that my skin may be getting less translucent as I get older (or maybe as a result of other factors like having a child or dietary changes). I can remember looking in the mirror after a shower (maybe 10 years ago, I am almost 40 now) and thinking that I looked like a Star Trek alien. The upper chest skin looked somewhat like the EDS picture in one of Sue New's links. But I wonder if everyone's veins are visible after a hot shower. My feet don't look that bad though. My hands and inner arms show blue veins quite well even though I am dark-skinned. In my case, it may have something to do with being too thin and bony.

The whites of my eyes also look greyish (at least compared with my teeth). I am not sure if the amount of greyness is constant, I am wondering if it varies with hormonal cycles, but have not checked that out in any scientific fashion yet. I also don't know if they count as EDS blue-tinted, or how to check that out without getting laughed at.

I haven't been diagnosed with anything. My rheumatologist appointment isn't till the end of 2007, so it will be a while. My problems are nuisance rather than deadly so I shouldn't worry about it, but I do hope that the doctor has had experience with hypermobiles.

On a somewhat related topic, is it likely that skin stretchiness may vary over time? I have a memory of pulling on the skin on the back of a hand (over 10 years ago) and thinking that the skin stretches way too much (I think that this was about the time when the backs of my hands were numb). But now that I have read about such things being related to hypermobility, I tried pulling again, and they don't seem very stretchy at all, though they may have been damaged by eczema-like problems.

...antimatter

p.s. Sorry for rambling, there are so many things that I want to ask now that I finally have the appropriate vocabulary and audience. I think that I will be quiet now...oops, i probably should say somewhere that I would probably be considered hypermobile (fingers, elbows, palms to floor, can do the skipping rope trick but probably shouldn't)

[sarahh]

Hi my veins look like that aswell and also I scar and bruise easily. I haven't been diagnosed with eds but I think I may have some of the effects that eds does though.

Sarah x

[tireesix]

My brother was very veiny, I am veiny when not so fat and my children are veiny....... I have really dodgy scars that my Rheumy was worried about...... However, for some reason I have been discharged without any of my questions beeing answered (accept for having hypermobile joints)......... I also bruise easily and when a doctor was cutting me in order to insert an implant (contracecptive) she was VERY surprised by how thin my skin was (I now have 2 gaping scars from it when I was told it wouldn't scar much......... One of those scars is over an old scar anyway so not realy noticeable..... Yet my rheumy said my skin felt normal (its not stretchy, maybe they weree just testing stretchiness)....... I too am wondering about possibly EDS hypermobility type.

[unhealthyamerican]

Skin normally thins with age, though I guess some factors can counter that. I suppose the skin on the hands and feet is some of the thinnest, given the lack of muscle there. My hands are slightly veiny (ugly, I think). Sometimes they look more veiny than others, which I can't explain with physical changes. Maybe my feet are veiny, too, but no one really sees them and happily I seldom see theirs. Male skin is thicker, so I probably have less of this problem than many others do. As I recall, a non-bony elderly relative had very visible veins in the hands and bruised easily, which I say aloud if anyone wonders about the hereditary origins of their condition.

[nonyanomemory]

My veins are like this, particularly the picture linked by Sue but as the detail says this is normally linked with EDS vascular type.

[tigerbunny]

My belly isn't that translucent, but almost everything else is. My arms, hands, chest (all of it), legs and feet, all have very visible blue veins. I'm also with the hyperextensible skin, and mother was too. I bruise very easily, and I thought that was the anemia, but now I'm thinking it's more likely the EDS.

[tireesix]

What does an unusual scar look like?????? If I post photos of mine would you be able to tell???

[Sandy L]

tiresix:
They are often wide, perhaps 1/4" to 1/2" (6-13 mm), and paper-thin. They look like the stretch marks one sees with pregnancy. Sometimes, just to be contrary, they heal with a cicatrix or hypertrophic, wide, thick appearance, but that usually happens when healing is interrupted. It mightbe posible to tell from a picture, but the thinness is best appreciated by running a finger tip lightly over the surface. It is sort of crepe-like.

[tigerbunny]

As long as were here, ... I'm so sorry to be a pest, but what are 'plasters'? Is that what they call band-aids where I live?

I bruise very easily, particularly breaking blood vessels in my hands. Once, I was tying my shoe, and after a minute or two my pinky started to itch. I looked and it was a huge purple spot, and I had no idea what I'd done. Eventually, I had to tie the shoe again, and I realized that was how I'd bruised it. I often find bruises in places I don't remember smacking.

Regular scrapes or surgery scars seem to heal okay on me, although I have some that seem to me to be wide and thin. Lots of stretch marks (no kids). I have one slightly keloid scar though, over a joint on one of my fingers. Tried to catch I knife I dropped and had 5 stitches. Doesn't really hurt, and it occasionally granulates (sloughs off skin).

[tireesix]

I am gonna try and get a good pic of my scars, they do look peculiar and I have always been known to be a slow healer.....

[tireesix]

I shall warn you that I used to self harm....... DH doesn't think the scars look normal and they have grown bigger over the years.

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h57/t ... G_0868.jpg
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h57/t ... G_0878.jpg
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h57/t ... G_0847.jpg
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h57/t ... G_0865.jpg

[Sue New]

Hi Tiresix,

Your scars look like mine - wide and raised but with lots of thin lines going through the scar vertically (what is called cigarette paper thin).

Sorry to hear about the self harming . From the looks of it you used to do it quite a lot. I hope this is a thing of the past now. Particularly with your poor wound healing issues.

Take care,

Sue.

[tireesix]

Sue, I found someone who helped me learn to love myself, who taught me that I deserve love and peace not pain and anguish........ I just wish the scars didn't turn out like this, its just another reason for the docs to throw the depression thing back at me,

I take it the scars are moore EDS than HMS?

[Sue New]

Hi Guys,

Now that I have the use of Photobucket, I have been able to download a copy of a picture of the visible veins over my shoulder. I hope it comes out ok (the picture was taken in the middle of the night with the flash on):

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p240 ... 270012.jpg

When my BP went up really high the other day, I noticed the veins on my chest were even more visible than usual, and I can now see my blue veins on my upper legs as well. My body looks like a road map

Best wishes,

Sue.