Wow the past 24 hours have been…a lot. Around this time last night I somehow subluxed my sacroiliac (SI) joint…I think because I was laying in some kind of pretzel position with my body pillow and didn’t realize how it was twisting me in a bad way until I tried to get up to pee before sleeping and I was suddenly in excruciating pain. I hobbled to the bathroom to try and pee but I was stuck because I physically couldn’t bend enough to sit comfortably and I also couldn’t stand comfortably on either leg. I was yelling in pain and fear and frustration trying to figure out what to do…it was so overwhelming and I felt so trapped.
When I finally hobbled back to bed I yelled repeatedly again as I tried to figure out a comfortable position to lay in, and continued yelling and moaning as I also tried to hoist myself back into a seated/hunched position so I could dig through my bedside table to find some pain meds. I finally managed to fall asleep for two hours on my back, and was awake again by 2am. Took half a lorazepam and fell back asleep until 4. At this point is started devouring the hypermobility subreddit and found a post with recommended exercises for realigning your SI joint.
I lay on my right side to try the easiest sounding one and sure enough, POP, something immediately shifted. Massive relief but not all the way better. I slid onto the floor to try another adjustment, got another pop and continued feeling more mobile and less overwhelming discomfort. It has been incredibly sore and tender and achy today…I’ve had to be super careful with it and haven’t been able to move around very easily, but at least it’s eons better than it was last night. I’ve just had to baby myself and take it super easy because bending and changing positions is still tricky and painful.
To make matters worse, when I was transferring out of bed this morning, I had to kind of slide myself across my mattress, and I ended up disrupting a scabbed puncture wound (previously caused by a huge ass splinter from a fucked up wooden bench) on the underside of my thigh. It started bleeding quite a bit but I couldn’t handle it because I couldn’t bear weight solely on my left leg because that’s my bad side rn, and I couldn’t bend down to tend to it. I wrapped it in some gauze and waited for my wife to get home.
But then when she was helping me clean it out, I had a horrific episode of vasovagal presyncope that caused unbearable dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, and extremely loud ringing in my ears and made me cover my ears and beg my wife to stop the loud siren right outside my ears. I felt so confused and disoriented. I laid down on the bathroom floor and just had to wait for it to pass but I low key felt like I was gonna die and that it wasn’t ever going to end.
I’ve had multiple episodes of syncope and presyncope before but honestly this was the most distressing and longest lasting one I’ve ever experienced. I’m not sure why exactly? Maybe I was already vulnerable because of my shit night and being sleep deprived and in pain from my SI joint? Having to deal with my own blood or injuries can definitely be a trigger but not consistently at all. Sometimes it’s totally fine. But this one hit me hard and I’ve had a hard time recovering too. I had to take a nap this afternoon and generally have felt quite unwell. The lightheaded feelings lasted for so long and I’ve had a lot of brain fog too.
I really wish my body could just do one thing at a time? I mean, I’d prefer no things, but like why did we have to combine this year’s most painful subluxation so far with the most distressing and debilitating presyncope episode. I also had to go right back to work afterwards which I’m sure didn’t help my difficulty recovering from it all. Anyway, I’m hoping my joints behave better tonight and I can get some good rest and feel more normal tomorrow.
