Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD)

[livingwith]

I’m 48yr old and this is my 1st injury ever. On Feb 27, 09 I fell while standing on a chair at work. Landed on my right hand which was bent inwards towards my wrist causing two fractures to my wrist. Seven weeks in a splint type device. Swelling grew worse, fingers like sauage, great pain also color of my hand is dark and shiny. Dr. decides on MRI test showing a torn ligament. They also inform me I now have RSD. After hearing RSD and reading a brochure, I woke up for the first time. I sa...Read the full article

[ccronk]

Hi Melanie,

Please let me share with you what I have learned. I have a posted story, but I want to share with you what I wish people would have told me when I first found out I had RSD. All I did when I first found out was read the stories on line to the point where my family wanted to take my computer away from me. My foot was broken in multiple places so I couldn't do much but try to block out pain and hope to die overnight. The first two minutes of every day were heaven as that is the only time I didn't wish for death to come as for some reason the pain wasn't present at that time. I kept trying to find stories online with positive outcomes, and as you probably know by now, there aren't many. After months of being so drugged up that I couldn't remember what happened five minutes before, I discovered a few things. One is that the more I touched my angry leg and foot, the better for the moment things became. The cast had been removed multiple times, because they thought it was on too tight as I had such horrendous pain.This gave me access to physically touching my skin as well as using a TNS unit. I also learned to change doctors as needed and to let them know when medications were doing more harm than good. After lots of physical therapy and nerve blocks I started pushing more through the pain. The more I can get my circulation going, the better I am. My foot no longer wildly changes temperature and does not appear waxy and purple, even though my left foot and leg are a slightly different color than the right. My PM doctor says he wishes he could get everyone to fight as hard. Even though I don't hope to every be pain free, I live a relatively normal life. I have arthritis and joint pain in my mangled foot, but I exercise on it, because I know that when I will have nerve pain that is far wore than the joint pain. I also find that occupying my brain with other things helps to block out some of the pain.