I wanted to say hi. I was one of the people who gave you an answer on Yahoo earlier.

A few things...like everyone has said, not everyone gets all of the symptoms. It's true, a very tiny minority of people even have RSD without pain, but it's extremely rare (and kind of weird, if you think about the name complex regional pain syndrome). I've sometimes thought that my level of pain isn't as bad as other people have described too!

When I first got hurt, I had very few symptoms. Just some pain--not really that bad, but it seemed bad to me...I was 12 and had never experienced anything like that, and some allodynia. My leg would turn funny colors once in a while, like when I got out of the shower, it would be all red and the other one would be normal. A few years later, all that changed and I suddenly had the swelling, color changes, temperature changes, sweating, dystonia (especially dystonia) and nail growth changes that I had read about.

I'll tell you that until recently, I thought I was the only one to have only mild and intermittant symptoms in the beginning! I hope that if this is the case for you, you get the treatment you need now in order to never go through all of the other stuff.

I've heard of a few things that mimic RSD symptoms, and it's of course possible that one of those is the cause of your problems. But it's equally possible that it's RSD. I know that thoracic outlet syndrome has similar symptoms to RSD, and it has something to do with compression of nerves and blood vessels in the arm (I really know very little about this, to tell the truth). Also, I've heard of several people who had nerve/blood vessel entrapments, which can also mimic RSD. A person I know very well was almost diagnosed with what he called the "dreaded RSD" until they figured out that he had some nerves and blood vessels in his elbow that were compressed. He actually had to have an elbow replacement, and is now just fine. I'm very glad they figured it out for him!

I really hope this helps you, but I'm not sure it will. I also hope that whether it turns out that you have RSD or not, you find something that works!

-Betsy