I don't have the touch sensitivity or the burning. But if I try to hold a cold can of soda in the hand on my bad side, it will burn as if it is hot. My hand on that side used to get icy cold and I had to wear a glove much of the year. The skin turns various shades of red to red-purple. It's much worse in winter. But, the RSD is centered in my shoulder on that side - I have no real pain in my hand. I do have grooved nails, and shiny skin though - but the shininess only happens when it is also red. At other times it looks fairly normal, although it always looks a bit swollen. Sometimes a LOT swollen, but always a little. I think it's odd that the signs show up in areas I have no pain.

Even though I have no pain in my arm, and my worst pain is in my shoulder and upper back and neck.... my entire arm feels like it is in a huge, arm size blood pressure cuff that is 3/4 pumped up. It is the worst pressure feeling. When a storm is coming in and the barometric pressure drops, it feels like that blood pressure cuff is really really tight.

The only sign that shows on my shoulder where the pain is bad is that 4 years later, it's swollen, and a bit oddly shaped from it being half frozen up all these years, and I had a lot more hair on it for a while - but now there is no hair on it. Sometimes the muscle spasms are so bad, you can see them.

The redness and coldness in my hand have been helped a LOT by taking novasc every 12 hours. I think it's 5mg. I also take Avapro. I guess it's a good thing I have high blood pressure, since those meds seem to help some of the symptoms of RSD. I tried the one that is a patch, is it Catapress ( you can tell I take Topamax! LOL) but the norvasc helps a lot more. Since switching to norvasc, I don't wear a glove nearly as much, and the swelling and color changes are a lot less.

I also have RSD in my feet. RSD started in 2001 when I broke my right foot. I had many signs of it back then, but several doctors said it couldn't be it because it wasn't hot to the touch, it was cold, and I wasn't sensitive to light touch. They didn't know about Cold RSD. The only sign of it there now is pain. It still feels like I am walking on two broken bones. This past winter, I had two stress fractures in my left foot - probably from favoring my right foot for all these years. They say the fractures have healed - but it still feels like those bones are broken too - and the nails are ridged and crumbling, so I think RSD is in that foot now too. Good news is that now both feet feel the same, so I no longer limp.

I went to a really great Dr. at Cleveland Clinic - not Dr. Stanton Hicks, but a woman who worked with him for years. She now runs the pain clinic at a hospital in a suburb of Cleveland - but still part of the Cleveland Clinic. She still works with S-Hicks and RSD. She said that in the next 20 years she thought they would define many different types of RSD. If I remember correctly, I think she said more they think there will be more than 10 kinds. I wish my insurance still covered her. She was the most knowledgeable doctor I have gone to about RSD.