Originally Posted by ali12

Hello Roger and Welcome to Neurotalk!!! You will meet many great people here who i'm sure will try and help you if they can and I promise we will go gentle with you lol!!

I'm so sorry to hear that you also suffer from RSD and of everything that you are going through right now!

I have RSD/CRPS in my left leg and both arms. I developed in March 2007 when I was 12 years old after an ankle sprain and it spread to my right arm about 5 months later after another injury and then to my left arm in January of this year.

When the RSD spread from my leg to my right arm, everything happened very fast. I was in the bath tub and tried getting myself out but fell and knocked my arm as I was suffering from blurred vision from a medication. My mum said she would get me out but I tried getting out myself as I wanted to be as independant as possible ... I wish i'd let her get me out now!!!

Within about an hour of falling and knocking my arm, my wrist area started to go blue and then swelt up a lot and became very painful. I think I knew straight away that it was the RSD as I had all of the symptoms. My arm got worse over the next few hours and my arm began to close into a fist (I suffer from Dystonia as a result of the RSD).

My mum to me to the hospital where they xrayed my arm and said it wasn't fractured but sent me immediately to my Pain Management Doctor for him to have a look at it.

He diagnosed a spread of the RSD and then increased my medications and send me to Physical Therapy to try and help.

When the RSD spread to my arm earlier this year, the symptoms came on pretty gradually. I fell on some black ice getting in the taxi cab to go to school (I attend a special school centre due to my RSD) and twisted my arm. I had quite a bit of pain after the injury but didn't really think anything of it as it wasn't as bad as the usual RSD pain.

Within the next few days though, my shoulder got more and more painful and whenever I touched it, it hurt a lot. My mum also noticed that it started going red so mentioned it to my PT's when I next saw them who said it looked like a spread of the RSD but they couldn't diagnose it as they weren't a doctor.

If you suspect that the RSD is getting worse and/or spreading, I would definitiely call your Pain Management Doctor if you have one to see what he/she says you should do.

Keep trying to move your affected limbs as much as possible. I KNOW it hurts a lot but it's really important that you try and keep moving!! Are you in Physical Therapy at the moment? PT's can often give you some good exercises that might help if they treat RSD.

I also suffer from the Nausea that you mentioned. I spoke to my doctor about it and he said that it's probably from the ammount of pain I am in. Some medications can cause nausea also so it might be worthwhile looking at the side effects.

Take care of yourself and I hope you feel better soon!! Please keep us updated when you can!

Alison.