Good Morning All! Warning medication is making my normally poor spelling and grammar even worse ! Please forgiver typos and brevity, thanx.

Thank you Nanc, Vrae, Krow47, tos8, RSDRenee, Az-Di, visionoisiv & the others who reached out to wish me good luck yesterday - that little gesture of kindness means so much!

It has certainly been a long 24 hours. After getting the epidural placed, I received the first to medication bolus injections while we waited for the hospital to assign a room. The medication was fantastic except that it paralyzed from the chest down and limited use of my hands/arms. Gosh, what a bummer since the pain was completely gone :/ Let me tell you what an eye opener that experience was though... I have always had respect for those who are physically incapacitated, but I cannot explain how deeply I feel for anyone enduring that kind of daily challenge. I mean I know I often say 'I can't do something' because of pain.. but this experience has given me a whole knew understanding of what the term 'can't' actually means.

Anyways, moving along.

After getting my room number it was actually almost 8 hours before they were able to start the 'continuous epidural' due to one problem after another. I was beginning to think I wouldn't actually get this therapy after all. Thankfully after a mechanical failure, battery change and an expert nurse from another floor being called in to help with this machine they did finally get it going. By this time however I was beyond miserable. People going in and out of the room, bumping into my legs and this stupid air-vent blowing ever so gently over my bed all together brought tears to my eyes and and uncontrollable shake to my lower body. The nurses tried there best to avoid causing me pain but as you and I know all to well that this thing we call CRPS is relentless, not caused by anything in particular, just made worse by them.

After adjusting the meds in the epidural I was able to re-gain the use of my arms and the less painful CRPS leg. The right one and most painful one is still numb to where function is limited and sadly.. still has a couple of the painful symptoms breaking through. That seriously bums me out - I do hope that with some fine tuning of the medications, that we strike a perfect balance between pain control and functionality. Not giving up yet!! The next few days are more about blocking the pain party my nerves have been having than anything else.

Good news - I slept for 3 hours straight!! Whoot Whoot that was so nice. Normally I only sleep for 30min to 1 hr at a time before pain jolts me out of my dreamland. That was what I was looking forward to the most honestly.. just a little quality sleep It is amazing how much more we can endure, when we aren't sleep deprived.

I really do hope today goes a little more smoothly.

Tessa