Hi everyone, I wanted to tell you about my appointment with the VERY BEST PM/NEUROLOGIST I have ever met!! He is here in FL, but I had to travel 70 miles to see him (which is a lot of hard miles for me) but I would have traveled ANYWHERE to have met him. Faith in humanity, specifically PM Doctors, restored!! Let me tell you my experience. The staff was nice enough checking in. I was called back and greeted by a medical student (nooooooooo) who would first be doing an examination on me......(nooooooooo. I've been to that party many times before and it wasn't pretty.) She carried on, asking questions, COMPLETELY unfamiliar with RSD. I felt terrible already from the long drive, and her "exam" was becoming so painful I felt like throwing up. She took tons of notes and said she was going to go talk to the Dr. and return with him. To my amazement and delight in walks the MOST (BY FAR) compassionate Doctor I've EVER met!! He took one look at me and with the tenderest of eyes introduced himself, and began to ask me questions that NO Dr. has ever asked, and he REALLY listened to my responses! Then he began teaching the student and I both with such kindness (impressive.) He pulled out an expo marker and began to circle parts of the body on a large dry erase board with a front and back picture of the body printed on it. Without any boastfulness he said, Dr. Schwartzman, who is a renowned RSD specialist, was my boss for several years. I was trained by him, then looking at the student he said, "you never want to touch a patient that has RSD. You want the patient to call the shots on their comfort level of you touching them in anyway. It's like if you have an itchy foot, you could scratch it and get relief, but if someone else scratched your foot it would most likely tickle. With an RSD patient, your touching them could send their pain through the roof." Ahhhhh I seriously thought there was an angel in the room. He said to the student, "I'm going to show you some things to look for with RSD patients, and then he began asking me questions. 110% agreeing with my answers, and explaining my complete diagnosis to both the student and I. He said, "she has total body RSD. That means out of 3 levels of RSD, she is level 3, and this is why." He began pointing out all the reasons without touching me. I was in complete shock at his understanding of this disease. The student in there turned out to be a huge blessing because the Dr. was breaking things down for both of us really. Then we went onto medicines starting by him asking me what I felt ever worked or didn't (wow, so much interaction was blowing my mind.) He than started writing a huge list of medicines and procedures and why they would or would not work for me (mainly why they would not. He did that very compassionately) Then he opened the floor for me to express my concerns. One of which was severe eye pain, vision loss, and forgetting words, people, and sometimes even how to talk. He actually got a little emotional and said, "Your RSD has spread to your face, I can see it. I can also look at your eyes and know it has spread there. We can't stop this process now that it has left your central nervous system, we can just try our best to make you feel comfortable." Then with even more compassion he said, "the other symptoms you described tells me it has begun to affect your brain. I am so sorry. Again, this is our objective, to try to make you as comfortable as possible." After an hour and a half visit with him. (Not including the student time.) We came up with a treatment plan that I felt comfortable with. He bid me farewell by sticking two fingers out and said "I would like to shake your hand, but you only do what you can comfortably." I actually started to cry and said, "you could never understand the blessing this appointment with you has been." He then just smiled very humbly and warmly. I was in my wheelchair leaving, and he asked if he could assist me in any way. He said, "I want to see you in a month, but at my closer office. I will walk up to the front desk and tell them to fit you in my schedule there so you don't have to travel as far." He did just that. I left with my husband, and I was just in tears. Tears because the possibility of completely losing my vision and forgetting my sweetheart and young children (which has already happened a few times this week) terrifies me, but honestly there were many more tears of gratitude to have found such a compassionate soul. I will be following this Dr. wherever he goes

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