Were your katemine infusion the continuous 5 days awake procedure? Well, I was in for 7 days, but they build up the strength over the first couple of days so you arent' at full strength until the 2nd day, giving you 5 days at that strength.

Where did you have it done? How much did it cost? Did insurance cover it?
I'm in Australia, and we're very lucky that ketamine infusions are covered by the health system, so all it cost me was the tv hire fee and the cost of buying chocolate out of the vending machine when I got the late night munchies!

You had different response from the katemine in terms of pain relief. Your best response was the 10 months pain free. Can you think of the reason why you had different response? Was your first katemine offer you the best outcome? Was the second, third or forth less effective?
Ok, here's the rundown:
1st in late 2004- 30 days totally pain free and it pretty much kicked the allodynia down to much lower levels from then on
2nd in March 05- 10 months of mostly total pain relief- a few flare ups here and there but always brought on by injury (ie burning my hand on the oven tray) and they went back down after a few days. I was able to fall pregnant during this time, too!
3rd- about 8 weeks after Hannah was born, in Aug 06- this didn't work and had to be stopped early due to raised liver function levels. But my drs don't think the ketamine did this, I'd had a series of nasty uterus infections after my c/section and had been on double antibiotics (and iv ABs in hospital) until a few days before that infusion started, so they think that was the cause.
4th- mid 2007 (I can't remember when, how bad is that?!)- gave me about 3-4 weeks of pain levels down at 2's and 3's, instead of constant 8's and 9's. I was happy to take that! But it didn't last long unfortunately.

Did you try the spinal epidural or lidocaine infusion?
Nope, haven't had any of those.

What would you rate your pain from 0-10 at the present and what were your pain when you first had it? Well that's a tricky one because I wasn't diagnosed with rsd until about 7 months after my original injury, so for that time all I had was ibuprofen, which as you know doesn't give a lot of pain relief for rsd. Now I'm on a fairly good combination of muscle relaxants, antidepressants and vitamins, plus temgesics or panadeine forte (codeine and paracetemol mix) for breakthru pain, so I don't find myself in that constant 10/10 like I did at the start. But my flareups are just as bad as back then. But like I said, my movement and strength is better because I used those pain relief breaks to build up my weak muscles.

In terms of numbers- At the moment the majority of my day is at about a 4/10. By dinner time I'm getting to 6 or 7 and by the evening when the kids go to bed I'm at about an 8 or 9, but I take a breakthru med if I need to, or I just wait it out as I take my other medications in the evening and that helps calm it all down so I have a chance of sleeping. It's not ideal but its the best I've had it in about 2 years (since the good infusion stopped). Even though I got some relief from the infusion last year, I wasn't mobile at all and didn't have the strength to stand up and walk around etc. Whereas now I only use my crutches when I leave the house, or I hold on to the stroller and lean on that. My rsd is at levels I can mostly deal with, so I can't complain.