I'm exactly the same too Lottie. I think it's because we are fighting this disease, and trying to keep as much of ourselves (from before it) as we can. Plus of course, we are intelligent people who realise that sitting around moaning and complaining all the time would be a really bad move for many reasons, physical and emotional, not to mention how it would affect our families... We all have really bad days, but we don't want those days to become every day! I'm lucky to be fairly mobile at the moment after 18 months in a wheelchair, but I well remember being pretty immobile for that time and just getting so miserable when you realise so many people don't really seem to care that much, or think its 'unnecesarry' and you could be doing more... I hope I wouldn't have been so judgemental if things had been the other way around.

When most people don't understand a health problem, it's easier for them to just dismiss it - everyone assumes that if it were really bad we would know about it, like cancer or MS. So they don't believe it can be so bad. I gave up trying to explain the realities of it to strangers (and some friends) because they just don't believe it. You lose some people very quickly when stuff like this happens, the old 'finding out who your friends really are'...

It's not denial in my book, it's getting on with life as best as we can. This forum is my outlet for everything CRPS lol, outside here only my pain doc seems to understand it.

So thank you all

Bram.