Tracy -

I liked the poem. And although this thought isn't poetic in the least, it does speak to "your pain is not my pain."

A couple of years ago I suddenly passed out, mid-sentence and for no reason that my neurologist could ever figure out, but in doing so, I split the back of my scalp pretty badly when it hit the tiled kitchen floor. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to the preservative commonly found in most lidocaine, so I require the preservative-free version, which is sometimes hard to get on a moment's notice. And the E.R. I went to didn't have any, so I told the doctor to put in the stiches acapella. She said "Are you sure? " and I said I was. She wound up putting in seven stiches, and it was nothing. I've since repeated that on two occasions when I had a PICC line inserted in my upper arm.

Compared to the pain of RSD, much (but of course not all) of the other stuff doesn't begin to match up.

Mike