In One Eye, Out The Other | Stretch Armstrong

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My daft stories

Stretch Armstrong

By Charlotte ⋅ May 7, 2008 ⋅

I had an interesting visit to the doctors this week, I am notorious for not going to the doctors for a while and storing up numerous queries and predicaments to bombard the poor doctor with as I sit down. This time I thought I had one that would be swiftly brushed aside. I fall over quite regularly and have done for years. However I fell over twice last week.

I realised I never look at these kind people, I would have no idea who they were if I bumped into them at another time. Even if my mum rushed to help me I honestly don’t think I’d know. The desperate need to escape the situation so I can limp off and wince in sheer agony at yet another layer of skin that has been removed from my knees overpowers any sense of what is happening.

So I merrily mentioned this to the nice doctor at the surgery this week. The first question, and a fair one knowing me, is whether it was likely I was falling over my own feet. Surprisingly no, my ankles just seem to disappear from under me. He checked my breathing, still not entirely sure how relevant that was but what I do I know, and then I was instructed to hop up onto the bed so he could check my ankles.

After about 30 seconds he asked me with a sense of horror in his voice whether his bending of my ankles was hurting me, nope, fairly normal I said. “You could join the circus, I have never seen anything like it” exclaimed the doctor. Marvellous, I thought.

Hyper-mobility syndrome, so I’m told. I prefer Freak of Nature, adds a little exciting element to some sort of disorder, or as my Dad loves to say I am far too bendy…. Brill, of all the ‘syndromes’ to have being far too bendy isn’t too bad.

Looking into it in more detail there are a series if tests to determine whether you have this peculiar oddity.