i try to imagine a careless life;

i try to imagine a careless life;

:: 2023 19 August :: 2.03 pm

Weird Body Shit
took my meds and feel like talking to the void about things, so here ya go

i'm fond of my body, despite a history of dissociation and all that, and i also have a lifelong love of anatomy and physiology. due to these two things, i've made a habit over the years to hunt down and get clues on anything i notice that's kind of unusual or weird about my body.

these aren't things that are actually dangerous to me, or [at least at time of writing] that cause undue suffering, which is what makes them primarily neat curiosities that i feel satisfied when i at least think i've gotten a ballpark answer.
mostly i just like cataloguing and figuring out these things; if i don't, no one will after all, and my body and its quirks are unique and tell part of my overarching story, so i value talking about them.

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1: slipping rib

this is the most recent and thus the most exciting!

so for many years, ever since i was a kid [circa 1999 or 2000 is the earliest memory i have of it], i have been able to "pop" my lower ribs. as a child i enjoyed grossing people out with it, getting them to touch my side and then disturbing them with the pop lol.

i knew it wasn't normal, based on everyone's baffled and grossed out reactions, but it has never caused me any actual pain, so i've never been too worried... but increasingly curious and inquisitive about it as the decades pass.
then last night, as i was laying on my back - one of the positions that aggravates this sensation sometimes - i started googling for the umpteenth time, and at last -- slipping rib syndrome.

if i'm right, this is a deformity of the costal cartilage [the cartilage that connects the front of your ribs to your sternum, especially the lower ones where the cartilage is very big and long] where the 8th-10th ribs do not connect properly. everyone has "floating ribs" [11th-12th ribs], which are small and don't come fully around to the sternum, but in these cases, a few of the ribs up above them may be additionally "floating" though they're not anatomically meant to be.

thankfully, though i have no idea how, this has never caused me any pain, only irritation and discomfort. it has gotten a little more noticeable in the past year, i think it might be because i've lost a significant amount of weight, and the ribs are more "floating" and unsupported by fat than they were previously, but that's just conjecture on my part.
normally this condition is associated with nerve pain, which is pretty much the one and only symptom which doesn't line up with my experience. but imo, that doesn't rule it out, because as is the case all over medicine, it's the cases with pain that get noticed, diagnosed, treated - squeaky wheels getting the grease, etc. i only notice because i'm hyper-body-aware, and nerdy about how the body works on top of that. otherwise it would just be a Weird Wrong Feeling in the bottoms of my ribs, i suppose.

the way it works is that the 8th through 10th ribs [not sure if all of them, or if it can be only one or two of them], being not properly connected to the ribs above, tend to fold up underneath the higher ribs. this is exactly how it has always felt for me to 'pop' the ribs: like a grasshopper stridulating, is the visual i always get. a lower rib rubbing against one above it and 'popping' from friction. [again, how the fuck does this not hurt me. but it is uncomfortable and annoying, and 'nerve irritation' is exactly how i've always thought of the sensation. and the symptomatic pain is caused by nerve irritation, so!]

this is probably only treatable with surgical intervention [artificial cartilage or some other stuff placed where the natural cartilage should be, to help support and keep the ribs in line], but unless and until this starts causing me physical pain -- or if i should turn out to be one of the unlucky few for whom this poses an actual threat of punctured organs, which can happen, but rarely -- i'm not interested in an invasive solution. it's not causing me undue suffering, or severely impacting my life; it's just one minor bodily discomfort that i can at least temporarily soothe [the "popping" motion also puts them temporarily back in place, i believe] that only happens in certain positions.
oh, and for me at least this is definitely bilateral. it's easier to pop on the right side, but feels the same on either side to me.
either way though, this is something i've been curious about for over 20 years!!! and no one's ever known what to tell me. i might bring it up at my next doc appointment, if the doc can handle me just wanting to talk shop about my body and physiology, without seeing it as me asking for treatment, since there isn't really much to be done, nor am i overly concerned. but i DO like talking shop with medical professionals, when they'll do so with me, so hey!

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2: hiatal hernia

this one began around the time i was a teenager, but before it happened to me, i observed it happening to my mother. most of the time it presents as a weird, pseudo 'hiccup'; usually just one, sometimes two or three, as if you hiccuped like a sneeze instead of "getting the hiccups". it's involuntary, but i can sometimes feel it coming and ward it off by taking deep breaths.
clearly i inherited it from my mother, but if i ever mentioned it with her i have no memory, so i don't know if she ever knew what it was or thought much about it. [my parents and i are no longer in contact, so i cannot ask now.]

this was another case where i was frustrated for decades before i finally hit on what looks like my situation: hiatal hernia. this is a condition where the upper part of the stomach protrudes through the hole in the diaphragm that admits the esophagus [the hiatus]. this results in the hiatus being pushed open wider than is normally intended, which can in turn put pressure on nerves in the area [the vagus nerve, iirc?], which is what causes the muscle spasm and involuntary inhalation "hiccup".
it doesn't happen all the time; i noticed it happened the most if i'd just eaten a big meal. i can definitely feel the stretching feeling, it's a little uncomfortable, and so is the spasm, but it doesn't usually hurt unless it's just an especially violent one [trying to eat too fast, for example]. sometimes rather than hiccuping, the diaphragm spasm "flutters" quickly instead, causing me to seem like i'm hyperventilating for a second. it's alarming to people because it's so sudden and often i can't stop it from making noise, but i always reassure them nothing is dangerous, just my diaphragm going off lol.

this one doesn't cause me too much distress, most of it was solved by just simply understanding what was going on [as with all of these, that is my primary goal]. even if i am wrong, it's unlikely to be something serious, as i've brought it up with my docs and they seemed not too concerned. as far as i know, hiatal hernias are mostly correctable with surgery, though i've read interesting research about 'massages' one can do to pull the stomach back down, but as interesting as that is, i doubt it would stay that way without surgical intervention.
as with the ribs case, i'm not worried about getting surgery on something that's not actually causing me pain & suffering, or putting me in physical danger, so as far as i'm concerned, unless it starts causing some other problem, all i do about it is try not to eat food that 'sticks to your ribs' too awful quickly or i'll have to do some unpleasant wrestling with my diaphragm for a bit :P

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3: metatarsus adductus

this one was no mystery, i've known about it my whole life, but it took me decades to actually hunt down the name of the condition and more info about it.
metatarsus adductus is a fairly common birth defect, most especially found in firstborn children [like myself]. it's also worth noting that it's commonly found in oversize neonates, and i was three[!] weeks late for my due date. [my mother apparently had some kind of quirk of her own, where her body just..... never went into labor. since i was the first, she didn't know this yet, and therefore i got almost a month of extra fetus time before being pushed out!]

basically what it is, is the infant at birth has feet that are bent in the middle, shaped sort of like a boomerang. this is caused by the metatarsal bones -- think of them as the same bones in the palm of your hand, the ones that look like extra finger joints, but don't function as such, but they form the midfoot and part of the foot arch. in this case, the tarsal bones [little rock 'knucklebones' that form the hindfoot and heel] are pushed outward and the connecting metatarsals follow, creating an inward curve. this is distinct and unrelated to other common foot deformities of infants like clubfoot, which is actually a deformity of the ankle and not the foot itself as in this case.

in my case, i was made to wear therapeutic shoes for the first year of my life. nowadays, at least visually, you'd probably never guess my feet were deformed without an x-ray; they look pretty straight and normal. with one exception: as i've gained more muscle mass and my body shape has shifted due to HRT, the top of my foot towards the outer edge has gained a weird little bulge of flesh on either side -- this was present before HRT, but is much more visible now. i always wondered wtf it was, but now i know: it's nothing wrong, just the tarsal bones underneath are pushed to one side abnormally, and the normal flesh on top just follows its shape and exaggerates it a bit.

as for effects, i am now in my early 30s and only in the past few years have my feet started to bug me at times other than when i've been on them too long... but in the Before Times, pre-2020, when i still worked a 'regular people job' and was on my feet for many punishing hours, it turned out that the foot pain i was complaining of was MUCH MUCH worse than normal. of course, everyone told me i was being a baby and needed to tough it out. this is one of many, many reasons why i have not sought out another 'regular job' since i was blessedly released from my last one.
i knew even then that the older i got, the more likely these would become a problem and i was told growing up that i might be at risk for arthritis in the future. in the x-rays i had taken last year [which were very crap quality, but still the first ones i'd ever had done as an adult], my bones looked pretty ok apart from still being visibly crooked inside, but there was a forming bone spur here and there. i made note of their positions and monitor those spots for pain [while not monitoring Too Much, to discourage convincing myself of pain which is not actually there :V].
generally though, at least at time of writing, my feet don't fail me too badly. i can usually walk pretty far without issue; it is standing in one place for long periods, such as at retail jobs, that hurts me the most. today happens to be a compression sock day; the balls of my feet [metatarsal->digit joint that touches the ground] were hurting me, so i wear compression socks for several hours to help squeeze my feet together some. it seems to be helpful!
in the future i would like to develop some unique gear like inserts for my shoes to help me walk more comfortably; it is difficult to find comfortable shoes and when i do find them, due to my deformity, i bear my weight in an unusual and uneven way on the inside soles of my feet, and my shoes, not designed with this kind of movement in mind, usually wear out more quickly and unevenly. [my left foot has always been the worse one, and when i'm feeling nervous, to this day my left foot will turn toe-in unconsciously. i can stand and walk with them straight, but i will always lean a little bit pigeon-toed now and then.]

edit because i forgot one other thing about this: if i try to bend my feet downward in certain positions - think of a ballet pose with the toes curved down as far as possible and the arch of the foot exaggerated - my feet will sometimes 'seize up' and it hurts quite a lot, i will have to grab my feet in my hands and physically move them back upright or else they will just stay that way and be in pretty severe pain! it's like a cramp but also in the nerves. my theory is due to the weird situation of my metatarsals, positions like that one cause them to 'roll over' each other, trapping some nerve in between the bones and crushing it. this causes the electrical pain sensation and maybe also the inability to move my feet on their own without help back out of that position. this would be a pretty rough handicap if it wasn't a pose that my feet rarely need to take, lol!