#mobility problems

Like, yeah of course it does, but when I was able bodied I just don’t think I grasped the extent.

I can’t just quickly nip into a shop. Everything is multi step, I rely on other people and the pace they move (how fast my husband is at getting my walker out, how available a staff member is to give me a mart cart key, if I can find someone to reach the top shelf).

If I forget something upstairs it’s going to cost me ten minutes, knee pain and twenty more minutes recovering.

Constant restraint over a long period can result in sudden death, usually by strokes or heart attacks. However this doesn’t always happen and anecdotally death seems more likely with tighter restraints and when more of the body is restrained.

 It also depends how long they’re imprisoned for because the longer someone is kept in restraints the more likely they’ll have a stroke or a heart attack.

 Survivors of restraint torture in China recently have reported being kept in more extreme restraints then you’re describing for months at a time and in a few cases several years. I haven’t read any of those cases recently but from memory the longest period I can remember was two years.

 The restraints used in these cases were mostly a sort of combined hand and leg cuff. Essentially the hands are cuffed in front of the body and the legs are cuffed as well, the chain between the cuffs is long enough for the victim to be able to move, walk but not run etc but it keeps them in a hunched position constantly. Which over the time period these things are used becomes very painful.

 That’s the closest real example I can think of so it’s what I’m drawing from here. :)

 I think your character would also experience some pretty severe muscular pain, limited to their arms in this case. The weight of the cuffs would probably add to this.

 So from personal experience (I once wore a pair of old darbys for a day as a fashion accessory… it was Newcastle) the weight of the cuffs in and of itself can hurt. It can be awkward to stand because wherever you put your hands the weight sits uncomfortably. I found it especially hard on the thumbs because the weight was resting on the top joint where the thumb joins the wrist.

 This is a pain sort of like a bruise.

 Your character would also have muscular pain throughout the arms, due to restricted movement and the awkward way they’d have to move around the cuffs.

 Over months or years restraint use like this causes muscular wastage. I’m not a medic so I’m not sure exactly how or why this happens. But if someone can’t use their limbs normally the muscles tend to die off slowly, causing weakness and in extreme cases mobility problems.

 Most of the survivors of long term restraint torture in the Chinese cases reported mobility problems after release. I’m not sure how long term these problems are.

 I think that nerve damage would be possible with any long term restraint torture involving metal cuffs. Constant weight and pressure across a relatively small area of the wrist can cause that sort of damage. And that results in a permanent loss of mobility; usually a loss of fine motor control (ie struggling to do up buttons, write with a pen etc while still being able to move the arms and make weaker more clumsy movements with the hands).

 Muscular damage is at least theoretically fixable. Physiotherapy can do a lot to help people with these kinds of injuries recover strength and mobility.

 The weight of the cuffs and the way the character has their hands cuffed makes broken wrists more likely. If the character trips and sticks out their hands to catch themselves the cuffs and positioning of their hands- Well it makes breaks more likely.

 Restricting mobility shouldn’t hinder the character’s ability to take care of themselves too much in this case. So I don’t think that this would lead to them say, eating less or being unable to clean themselves.

 The pain would effect their sleep. Which can have long term effects on more or less every aspect of their health.

 Beyond that I think it’s just the usual long term psychological effects of torture. Anecdotally chronic pain seems to be a little bit more common in this kind of case.

 I think that’s it, I hope it helps. :)

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If my health keeps going where it's going I'm gonna end up needing something but canes and stuff are helpful for only very short amounts of time so..hmm