thank you both for opening up and sharing feelings so honestly. Greyhoundlover, you were so right about me googling for forever trying to find some way, some place, to be able to vent my feeling to those who understand, ask questions of others who have had to suffer from RSD; we learn so much from listening to others and their own personal experiences. BUt, needless to say, I am appreciative to the both your for being so honest and open. IT certainly makes me feel less alone in what I am going through, and, it's so very validating to hear that others, too, have experienced what I am experiencing now.

I feel like, after my initial injury, and all the months following, like my life was the trunk of a tree (to use an analogy). There was the losing of job being one branch on the tree, financial stress being another branch, loss of ability to do many things I enjoyed being another, pain being another, friends that don't understand being another branch, so on and so forth, until, there' this huge tree with so many different branches and circumstances/emotions wrapped up or attached to them. but, thus far, if I have learned nothing else, I learned, and am continuing to learn, how to put things on the shelf in my mind and pull them out only when I need them and they are on the day's agenda. One thing at a time, as well as one day at a time. If I sat down, on my couch, whether I was having a good pain day, or a bad pain day, and really thought about alll the circumstances, emtions, and limitations, in my life, I would lose my sanity and soul. And again, of all the many things I may have no control over, my emotional well being is not one of those things. I can fight, fight, fight, with my emotional endurance and blind faith that things will get better in time. IF I take it one thing at a time, one day at a time, things seem a lot less overwhelming.

Greyhoundlover, I have to give you props for managing this disease with a child and husband involved in the picture. I know, though engaged, but, not with child, how difficult that must be. I give you credit, as I hope you, too, give yourslef credit, for your ability, from what you wrote, to take care of your child, husband, and the fourth party living with yoiu (your pain), all at the same time..plus, with your working such long hours. I hope that you are givng yourself a pat on the back for managing all those things. YOu must be a pretty emotionally strong woman yourself.