Hi Denny,

I know we are close friends but I also don't agree with what you said about Andrea's paper article! I think it was very well written and very informative and in NO way did I feel offended by it or think that she was making us out to be drug seekers!!!!! You CAN become addicted to pain medications even if you are in a lot of pain and have problems!! My Pain Management Doctor is always concerned when prescribing me any highly addictive medications as he doesn't want me to become addicted at my age!! I personally chose to come off all of my medications as they weren't doing anything at all and were just making me a lot worse - I think that is one of the problems for many people, the meds aren't working for them but rather than coming off them, they don't and stay on them for a long period of time which is why their bodies get addicted and build up a tolerance to them!

My nanan had Progressive MS and she become addicted to one of the sleeping medications that her Neurologist prescribed her - she convinced herself that she couldn't sleep without it even though she probably would have been able to!! Just because you have a known health condition, doesn't mean that you wont become addicted to the medications because in some cases you can ... again though, everyone is different on how they react and most medications that we are on ARE addictive unfortunately!!

I haven't had the SCS implanted so I can't comment on that however I have seen pictures of them implanted in people bodies and they DO seem to be pretty big!!

I too was pretty offended by what you said and I know Andrea spent a lot of time on her piece of work and I think she deserves a lot of credit for what she did ... she doesn't deserve for people to tell her that she is wrong as she is going through a lot right now!! Heck, even doctors don't know what the cause of RSD is or anything about it for that matter so I don't think anyone will ever be fully right at the moment!!

I'm sorry that you were offended by Andrea's article but I also feel that it was beautifully written and deserves a lot of credit!! This lady has RSD and she is still going to college and writing about RSD trying to get on with her life and she doesn't need people to judge her in a nasty way!!

Andrea ... I love the article and thank you so much for writing it for us! I'm SO glad you got an A+, you deserve it and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise!!