Hi Andrea,

I wanted to say welcome to the rest of the forum! I hope that Ashton's pain doesn't come back after pulling the TEC.

I told you all about mine...my first TEC (cervical, for my arm) was only in for a week, and all of my symptoms returned fairly quickly. The second one was a repeat of that but for six weeks, and my symptoms never returned in that arm. That was eight or nine years ago, and I'm typing this message to you with that hand without any difficulty or pain at all. It took another couple of years of therapy to get it back in fully working order, and there was still a lot of stiffness and pain involved, but not much RSD pain after that TEC.

There are tons of options still out there for Ashton. A lot of people commented on medication. There are lots of things to try with that, and playing around to find the best combination with the least side effects is always a good idea.

PT remains important, even when there's a lot of pain. It's important to do PT despite pain, up to a certain point. That point is an individual assessment for each person. We have to push ourselves, but not until there's so much pain that it's completely unbearable.

I hope that the TEC worked better than you think right now. It seemed that the longer mine were in, the greater strides I was able to make with recovery. I hope that Ashton was able to accomplish a lot with the break the TEC gave her.

-Betsy