[Frankie D]

Hi everyone. This is my first post! I would say I'm a newbie, but I'm 62 yrs. old, so I can't really call myself that. I was diagnosed with Isaac-Mertens Syndrome a little over a year ago. I had carcinoid cancer and two surgeries a few years before, and my doctor believes that it led to having this syndrome today. I have always been an athlete - a marathoner in my 20's and 30's, always a runner, then advanced yoga for the last 15 years. I can hardly walk anymore with the pain in my legs and hips, cannot do yoga anymore because of the nerves constantly making my legs shake, but I have discovered swimming as a new passion. So out with the old, in with the new! It has taken me some time to adapt to this, going through a few of the stages of grief I guess, but I believe everything is always changing, in flux, and so am I. That's a life. Sometimes changes occur on the inside, sometimes on the outside, but as they say, accept the things you cannot change. With acceptance comes strength. It's good to be here and discover what your journeys have been like.

[caroline2]

Welcome and we all do what we do at the times in our lives. I exercised all my life and danced into my mid 60's and the OA just got too bad, I now know I was doing so much damage all those years but loved what I was doing.

A hip replacement in 2010 at age 72 left me with more of a mess and now I do all kinds of alternative work to keep walking. And now work on myself with self acupuncture which I've learned thru others and doing acupuncture for years. I'm about to head to my needles now and work on the IT band damage from the surgery...hope I can get some "life" back in that area. It's so dead and achy enough.

Good that you can swim.

I take a lot of supplements and overall am healthy except for the OA and body mess.

Again, welcome and you can get some good help here.