by Lorie Spencer

Created on: February 24, 2010

The Familiar Pain

You would think that dealing with such a thing on a daily basis one might ‘get used to it’ if you will.  People can adapt to many changes and even uncomfortable or inconvenient things and seem to have no problem.  Pain, it is not one of those things.

From a minor injury, one that should not have caused pain left me in a kind of pain that I had never felt before.  This kind of burning sensation seemed to be radiating from my arm, a kind of cold mentholated feeling, yet it seemed to burn.  As hard as it to describe today can you imagine what it was like 16 years ago?

An instinctive response, that old ‘fight or flight instinct’ we hear so much about, took an instant to change my life forever.  At the age of 25 and two children under the age of 4, I was reduced to one functioning arm.  The other arm, that soon became referred to as ‘it’, was completely useless to me.  It seemed strange to me that even when I wasn’t trying to use the injured limb it hurt me, it ALWAYS hurt me. 

I soon noticed that the hand was acting of its own free will.  I didn’t think I wanted it to become inverted and deformed.  The thumb laid deep into my palm and I was not about to go through the pain it took to try and move it!  Frequent trips to the doctor and the pharmaceuticals that really didn’t help the pain I ended up in Physical Therapy.  At that point I was made aware that I only thought I was moving my fingers when asked; I literally could not move the appendages without looking at them and it took all the concentration I could muster.

Several months of this and there was nothing to note as a real benefit and I found myself in new world of doctors. There was hope though these were Pain Management doctors and would fix me right up! These appointments lead to Stellate Ganglion Blocks and on to Bier Blocks soon after. After about 16 to 18 treatments of this nature and I was referred to a surgeon.

I could bore you to death with the history of the sixteen surgeries consisting of various wires implants and medication trials but I would much rather move on to current times. In 2007 I went into remission.  Now I actively suffered and had treatment for RSD/CRPS for all those years and I truly thought that my life would end in that very situation.  How often do you hear of someone dealing with this Syndrome for this long and then it goes away?

I’m sure there were things I did to help it along. I started taking better care of myself, eating better. The most important thing I did was eliminate stress, and I had a mess of it. Now not everyone can take the extreme steps that I did but I can honestly say, “It is absolutely vital that you surround yourself with positive people and a little to no stress environment.”

People this Syndrome is fed by our adrenaline! That means when you live a stressful and high strung life style you are essentially fueling the fire that is killing you!  The huge amounts of medication can be avoided, reduced and even removed!  I am currently off of the large amount of separate medications, off of them; I still take one medication at a minimal dose. CRPS is not a life sentence, it is an emergency alert system telling you to change the way you live.

Learn more about this author, Lorie Spencer.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.