It is a strange feeling to walk into a doctors office and have to educate the doctor on your condition.  So few seem to know anything about Poland Syndrome or its symptoms.

Over the last 15 years since I have been reading about Poland Syndrome there is no new information available.  The symptoms that define Poland Syndrome are standard — removing the medical jargon, PS is defined as:

a birth defect

    on only one side of the body

effect the hand and/or pectoral muscle on that side

How that look in each case varies considerably.

In college I met a fellow that also had Poland Syndrome.  I was visiting a friend in her dorm room.  She was a nursing student and had a poster on her wall listing birth defects.  I didn’t think anything of it, I don’t even think I noticed it, until a friend of hers walked in and saw the poster.  He immediately walked over to it, scanned the list and said, “aha, you don’t have my condition listed here.”

“What’s your condition?” my friend asked in reply.

“Polands anomaly” was the reply.  I was shocked and horrified at the same time.

Shocked because I had never before met someone else with the same condition.

Horrified because I was afraid of being “found out.”

At that point in time, Poland Syndrome was not a topic I cared to discuss.  It was not something I talked about and not something I told anyone about.  I was so very afraid that he would see my hand and (since he didn’t seem fazed to the slightest degree) say, “Hey, you have it too!”  So I tried to hide until the encounter was over.

A few days later I got up the nerve to ask my friend for his name, so that I could look up his email address.  With much fear I wrote an email refreshing his memory on the encounter a few days earlier and asking about his Poland Syndrome.  He truly seemed to have no embarrassment or hesitancy about it.  In his case he was missing his pectoralis major, but his hand was completely unaffected.

That was my first introduction to just how much of a range the condition could have.

The degree to which a hand or chest is effected greatly varies from individual to individual, as do some of the additional characteristics that may appear, such as missing ribs or one arm being shorter than the other.

In addition to the defining aspects of Poland Syndrome there potential consequences of the syndrome.  The lack of a major chest muscle can often effect the alignment of the upper body.  I have one shoulder that is lower than the other and my posture is directly effected by my structural make up.

Folks with Poland Syndrome often want to know if other medical issues they have are related to PS.  That is a tricky one.  It is tempting to want to have an explanation for any and every issue.  Being able to put the blame on PS might provide some relief in a way.  However there is no new information coming out about Poland Syndrome to connect such things.

Is it possible that there are additional symptoms of Poland Syndrome that appear in some cases?  I suppose so.  Is there a benefit in trying to catalog every ache and pain under the heading of PS?  I don’t think so.  The evidence isn’t there to do so.  It may very well be that one has other issues, completely unrelated to Poland Syndrome.

The known, catalogued and recorded symptoms are enough for me to deal with for now.  Hopefully one day there will be more information available because research has been done  to better define the symptoms of Poland Syndrome and counter the effects the muscular differences can cause.