After Being Misdiagnosed, She Spent 18 Months In A Wheelchair Unable To Walk Or Stand Up, And She’s Learning How To Do This All Over Again

Emma Daniels is a 21-year-old girl living in England, who goes by @emmadaniels.x, and her Instagram posts are smiley and upbeat.
While Emma radiates positivity, she was misdiagnosed for years, and she spent 18 months unable to walk or stand up (which she has to now relearn all over again).
Emma’s symptoms started back when she was just a kid. She experienced “growing pains” that were so severe they left her in tears and without the ability to move her legs.
She now knows those were hardly growing pains; they were actually dislocations, but it took a long time for someone to finally understand what was going on with her.
Emma was in and out of the doctor’s office well into her teenage years, often due to unexplainable injuries that took forever for her to heal from, but nobody was able to quite figure out what was wrong.
“I started really struggling with joint pain and fatigue in 2020, and my toes were going purple due to poor circulation,” Emma explained in an Instagram post.
“I was diagnosed with Raynaud’s phenomenon and told they “couldn’t explain my joint pain.” The pain and fatigue and various other symptoms continued getting worse until I got a second opinion in
2021. I was diagnosed with evolving lupus and put on hydroxychloroquine.”
Emma certainly hoped this would put her on the path to improving her health, but just the opposite happened to her.
She became more and more sick, and eventually, she thought she might have gotten to the bottom of what was happening after doing some of her own research.

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She found out about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and talked to her specialist about it, wondering if that was perhaps behind all of her symptoms.
Sadly, this man laughed right in Emma’s face, so she got another opinion. She actually had to get three different opinions, and a doctor finally listened to her.
She was diagnosed during the summer of 2022 with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, exactly what she suspected she had.
“I was already having to use a wheelchair 80% of the time (using crutches the rest of the time) due to my frequent dislocations, lack of help and treatment, and my joint pain,” Emma said.
“If I didn’t use my wheelchair, I wasn’t able to work, go shopping, see friends, etc. I had been doing private physio long before that, but despite this, I completely lost the ability to walk or stand in April 2023 as my knees started dislocating every time I stood or walked.”
Emma went through multiple kinds of different braces to help try to stabilize her, but not even the ones made of carbon fiber were able to prevent her hips and knees from dislocating on her.
Refusing to give up, Emma underwent experimental treatments and then found a company called Able2B, which specializes in assisting disabled children and adults with their strength and fitness.
It was only after Emma began working with Able2B that she saw a great improvement in her physical abilities, and she enjoys that the gym setting makes everything feel “more normal” for her.
“I am now, after over 18 months of not being able to walk or stand AT ALL and over 2 years of not being able to stand or walk unassisted, relearning how to do these things with the correct help and support of medical professionals,” Emma continued.
“I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for following along on my journey and for all the support and kind words. Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments, and I will reply as best as I can.”
Emma is such an inspiration! You can follow her on Instagram here.
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