This is a story about a teenage girl whose limbs dislocate nearly 18 times a day, due to weak collagen which is unable to keep her limbs in place.
This is a story about a teenage girl whose limbs dislocate nearly 18 times a day, due to weak collagen which is unable to keep her limbs in place. Just17 years old, Phoebe Bruce from Hawarden, is suffering a rare genetic condition due to which even a yawn can cause her arms or legs to dislocate.
She is suffering a condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome which means her collagen is too weak to hold her limbs in place. On an average, Phoebe has suffered a dislocation each day of her life and her time is spent rushing back and forth to hospital.
'I can put my other limbs back in,' she said. 'But my arms are coming out every day and they are the ones that get stuck out - there’s no way I can move them. Anyone with my condition - it’s a coping thing - and you just have to try and deal with it, knowing that you are going to have multiple dislocations in a day.'
She seems to have inherited this condition from her father, who suffers a milder form of the genetic condition.
Phoebe’s parents are waiting to know whether she can receive specialist treatment at the Hypermobility Unit at St John’s and St Elizabeth’s.
'We have been told this is the most extreme case they have seen. The process for funding has been too slow. It’s taken a long time. It seems to have gone round in circles.
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